


law of the lever

by sharkfights (feartown)



Category: Rizzoli & Isles
Genre: F/F, also some offhand moon-related jokes, content warning for explicit oatmeal chat in chapter 5, fun fact i wrote this SEVEN years ago almost to the day, no artificial colours or flavours just all natural disaster lesbians, this edit just makes it longer and hornier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-07-23 15:51:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20010871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feartown/pseuds/sharkfights
Summary: Her gut drops like a hot weight as she remembers the exact words Maura used before she ran out the door and back to the precinct.Wife.----a heavily reworked story from 2012 originally crossposted to ff.net/lj.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> in a really dumb, stupid, monumentally dense move i wrote an article for work about risotto island and decided to watch the pilot for """"research"""" as though that could end well and now here i am entirely rewriting a fanfiction about two lesbians that i thought i had left in 2012 where they BELONGED
> 
> not sure how long it's gonna take me to get rid of all the commas i thought were a good idea to use but lets just see how we go

IN 340 AD Archimedes said _give me but one firm spot on which to stand and I will move the Earth_. 

Maura thought she knew what that meant, that intellectually she understood that he was referring to the lever, to the three assumptions and the law he had proven all those hundreds of years ago. Simple, precise geometry. 

But now she’s beginning to think there’s a little more to it than that.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


When a cop dies it’s usually the press conferences, the paperwork, the clinical treatment of a colleague that gets to everyone. Maura’s seen it before with Jane; the way she boxes in and gets testy at the slightest error or dead-end in a case. It’s a defence mechanism, and eventually it passes.

But this time, when a cop dies, what gets to them is the knowledge that it should have been someone else.

Detective Anton Bueller was a rookie looking for experience; he wasn’t much older than Frankie and he’d just made the ranks in Homicide. He was smart, eager, careful -- all the right words; all the right qualities to make it to the top. And he would have -- if he hadn’t taken Jane’s place on a stake-out and been shot three times in the chest by Boston’s latest homicidal maniac.

They all take it hard, but Maura feels the guilt settle in her like a physical weight; feels it spreading like a tumour. That doesn’t make sense, clinically, because tumours can’t be caused by a feeling -- but Maura still desperately wants to try and cut it out of her body all the same. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The clock reads just after seven when Jane wakes her for the memorial. Her husky _Maura_ is sharp-edged with grief, and something delicate in Maura chafes to reach out and find her hand. But Jane is already up, her weight gone from the other side of the bed.

This is the third night Jane has slept over. Maura wants to put it down to Jane’s normal sense of safety being disrupted, and that she’s chosen Maura to commiserate with over her mother or Frankie because Maura won’t nag or judge. 

But when Jane usually stays over it’s because she’s too tired to drive home, or because one bottle of red wine turned into two. She sleeps on the couch or in the guest room sprawled out on her back; she doesn’t crawl into the other side of Maura’s bed with a whispered _go back to sleep_ , her fingers resting surely at the small of Maura’s back. Maura can’t help but wonder: maybe there's guilt spreading inside Jane too.

Maura rises and dresses sombrely. Her dress is dusty charcoal and she zips it to her waist, sweeping her hair around over one shoulder and following the sound of Jane’s grumbling out into the kitchen. She’s at the counter frowning at Maura’s espresso machine, poking at the buttons like they’ve wronged her personally. 

“Your coffee maker is stupid,” she grouses, and readjusts the neckline of her dress. Jane always looks awkward in dresses; even though Maura picked this navy one specifically because she knew she would look good in it. It doesn’t seem matter what the dress looks like, though, Jane will still find a way to look uncomfortable in it. Maura wonders when she stopped feeling safe without a weapon at her hip. 

She walks over to the offending coffee maker and presses the right button, a smile just hiding itself in the corners of her mouth. The machine hisses and gurgles, and Jane looks alarmed until a thin stream of coffee pours into the travel mug she’s placed on the grate.

“I thought you preferred instant,” Maura says, and Jane offers her a warm smile.

“Only because it’s easier to microwave.”

Maura makes a face and Jane chuckles as she fills the mug with water--boiled, not microwaved.

“I made it for you,” she says, fixing a lid to the top and sliding it across the counter. “Sorry we don’t have time for anything better.”

Unease starts to nettle at Maura -- the closer they get to leaving, the less she wants to go. For some reason, it seems wrong to her; arrogant of them to assume that Bueller would want their sympathy when it feels like it’s their fault he’s dead.

Maura’s fault. 

Jane doesn’t notice her mood, but does see Maura’s forgotten dress zipper. Without hesitation she brushes the stray hair away from Maura’s spine, then her fingertips splay cool at the nape of Maura’s neck as she drags the zip up her back. 

She swallows hard. “I don’t know if I should go to this, Jane.”

Fingers still pressed to Maura’s skin, Jane tenses. “Why not?”

“Because it’s a cop thing. It’s not really anything to do with me.”

“But you _knew_ him,” Jane says, a familiar whine in her voice. “Come on Maura, I need you there with me. Anyway, you’ve come to dozens of cop things, this isn’t any different.”

But it _is_ , Maura wants to say. It _is_ , because I’m the reason he’s dead.

Maura doesn’t want to know if Jane secretly thinks that too; that she’s only asked Maura to go because she wants Maura to face what she did. But Jane is looking at her the way she always does, the way that makes Maura feel giddy and hot, her heart stranded in her chest. It’s too hard to say no when she’s standing so close.

So Maura simply nods and hopes she can put her discomfort aside. When Jane taps her hip, her hands feel like a ghost’s.

“I’ll meet you in the car,” Jane says in her ear, oblivious. “We gotta go pick up Frost.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The memorial is in New London at the family estate, and the morning is grey as they drive out of Boston. A storm is trapped in the hills ahead of them and the sky is the colour of iron, clouds almost blue at their edges. It looks like a part of the world that is still half-asleep.

Maura herself feels half-asleep, idly regarding the increasingly rural landscape as they drive into New Hampshire, not really taking it in as her brain ticks over with less peaceful thoughts. 

Jane and Frost talk about Bueller, and about all the other cops they remember who died on the job. They’re sad but they’re not -- there’s as much laughter as there is sighs, and Maura tries to smile in the right places but she can’t stop thinking about what Jane said in her kitchen.

She has been to dozens of “cop things”; Jane invites her to them without even thinking now. It’s as common as after work drinks, or dinner, or a night at either of their houses. She goes to them and she’s not Jane’s date but she’s not _not_ Jane’s date, either, their friendship murkier and less defined by the day. The other cops treat her like Jane’s date most of the time; they stopped hitting on her months ago. Maura’s always wondered since if it’s because of something Jane has said to them, or just that she and Jane seem so much like two halves of a whole.

“You okay over there, Maura?” Jane asks.

Maura glances over at Jane, who looks concerned and amused and so achingly comforting that Maura can barely stand it. Then she looks back out her side window, back to the hills.

“It’s going to rain.”

“You a meteorologist now?” Jane asks, and then Maura feels the barely-damp spread of her hand on her thigh. It squeezes, just for a moment, then returns to the wheel. 

The storm breaks as they pull off the highway, drenching the grass and the patchwork cows and the lost, echoing feeling of another world.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Maura had met Anton Bueller’s wife (widow, she corrects herself) once before at some Sergeant’s birthday party last year. Another cop thing. At that event Stacey had seemed bright and supportive and happy, and genuinely interested to know about Maura’s work. 

Now, standing next to only a photo of her smiling husband at his wake, she looks small and empty.

“It’s always hardest to be the one who’s left behind,” Jane’s voice murmurs next to her. It sounds like gravel in the shell of Maura’s ear.

Unbidden, Maura sees a split second image of Jane in that photo frame instead of Bueller, and herself next to it, trying bravely to look composed as people give her hollow condolences. It turns her spine cold, and she thinks of the way his body looked lying on her table back in the morgue. 

She feels Jane step forward, and for a moment Maura is incredibly _proud_ that Jane’s always ready to provide whatever comfort she can. Maura watches her smile sadly as she takes Stacey’s hand and tells her that her husband was a great man who didn’t deserve the end he got. Maura wishes it was as easy for her to come up with something so simple but encompassing to say. Jane offers her so much clarity into the complexities of human interaction that without her as an anchor Maura is sure she’d drown.

When they go into the house proper Jane mingles with her colleagues, Maura in tow -- her ambiguous introduction all the more obvious today. She listens to speeches and rubs a hand over Jane’s arm when she hears her sniff, then tries to eat something so Jane doesn’t fret. She thinks about Jane, and Jane, and Jane. When they finally say their goodbyes, Maura searches out Stacey Bueller for one last fleeting look, and lets Jane steer her outside.

Her thoughts are like vines, like a weed, scenarios spreading out across her mind and setting her heart to hammering loudly against her ribs. 

All she can think is: today could be the day that Jane dies.

She has felt blood coat her hands; held a wet rib in her palm; stitched up the skin of corpses surrounded by the smell of decay. She’s autopsied her own half-brother, but she hasn’t known any of them the way she knows Jane.

Jane, who beside her is breathing fall air into her lungs and talking quietly to Frost, solid and swaggering and completely unaware of Maura’s train of thought as they walk down the drive. Bueller’s killer is still out there, waiting to strike again. This time, the target he hits could be Jane. Thinking of her lifeless and ashen on the cold steel of an autopsy table makes Maura feel physically ill, her stomach churning. She couldn’t stand to let someone else do it, but opening Jane’s chest to find out what’s inside stirs a fear in her so wild it makes her stumble.

Her hand shoots out to grab Jane’s wrist, steadying herself, and she can feel Jane’s heartbeat under her thumb.

“You okay?” Jane asks, chuckling.

“I—I shouldn’t have worn these heels,” Maura says, and it’s not a lie, not wholly -- she just _really_ wants her head to stop swimming.

“I _told_ you they were ridiculous,” Jane replies, brassy and teasing. She tucks Maura’s arm through hers as they head for the car. Maura feels for Jane’s bicep under her coat, the muscle and skin warm and yielding under the thick fabric. Alive. The wild feeling in her heart is steadied, if only for a moment.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


When Jane parks up outside her house, Maura feels uneasy. It’s irrational, worrying that Jane will get into a car accident or a random shooting on a Wednesday afternoon, but her fingers twist around her middle finger all the same. 

“Jane, will you come in for a bit?” she asks. “I have a bottle of red wine that needs finishing, and I’d rather not do it by myself.” 

“Feeling lonely?” Jane asks, and maybe she’s a little more understanding of Maura’s mood than she had thought.

Maura gives her a wan smile, and Jane returns it with a warmer one, nodding. “We can do whatever you want.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Maura sits close on the couch while Jane talks about nothing, and every time she moves it makes Maura want to reach over and put her hands somewhere, anywhere -– feel the beat of Jane’s heart under her skin, or the rough jut of bone in her hip. She stops herself only by virtue of having to explain herself; having to explain that suddenly she is consumed by the need to know Jane is still alive. Living, breathing.

It’s completely absurd, the idea that without some kind of physicality between them Jane will suddenly drop dead or vanish before her eyes. It defies any kind of logic Maura has ever been governed by.

And yet, her brain signals the muscles in her arm to move, and she feels safer when Jane’s fingers are finally laced through hers; when she can feel the small knot of a scar against her palm. 

Jane stops mid-sentence and looks down, not making an effort to do anything but tighten her grip around Maura’s hand. Maura is grateful once again that Jane can parse unspoken gestures so much better than herself -- Maura always has to ask a question, confirm a hypothesis; Jane simply seems to _know_.

“Today was hard, huh?” Jane says. 

Maura nods, and Jane either doesn’t want to know more or she thinks Maura isn’t up for discussing more, because she directs them right back to the previous topic of conversation.

“Anyway, Ma says that the stove in the guest house is too _fussy_ and the one in here is obviously superior--”

“That’s a state-of-the-art induction cooking range,” Maura says incredulously, trying to stop focusing on how the graze of Jane’s thumbnail is sending tiny jolts along her skin.

“You know Ma,” Jane shrugs, “Nothing gets in the way of the perfect gnocchi, ‘specially if Frankie _requests_ it -- so he’ll be here too, by the way. As usual you’re gonna be stuck with half my family for dinner… I swear, we should just put a ban on any more Rizzolis being allowed in here.”

She doesn’t know why Jane makes it sound like a bad thing. Why wouldn’t she want a loud family dinner to fill the corners of her large house with warmth and a tender, familial hum? All of it is still so unknown to her that Maura just thinks it sounds nice. Like maybe this is how she could see the rest of her life. 

Jane suddenly stands, abrupt as ever, and Maura unconsciously clenches her hand when she feels the loss of Jane’s around it. 

“So I’ll see you later, okay?” Jane asks, and Maura realises she’s completely missed the rest of the conversation.

“Right, dinner,” she says vaguely, still not entirely comprehending.

“Yes...” Jane says, tilting her head. “After I go back to the station. We have to interview the security guard from the impound lot where… where the shooting happened.” 

She gives Maura a searching look, then leans down and presses a kiss to her temple. It’s a confused gesture, but there is comfort in it and it serves to break Maura out of her haze.

All her anxiety from before comes rushing back tenfold, and she can almost hear a gunshot going off in her head. “The case?!”

Jane, a little taken aback at her tone, nods. “It’s kind of an ongoing thing, Maura.”

“But you can’t go,” she says, alarmed to find her voice pitching much higher than she intended. She stands, trying to get some height, and wills herself to not physically sit Jane back down on the couch again. 

“Maura, what’s going on? You’ve been super weird ever since we got home.”

Blood rushes loud in her ears as she swallows, skin hot with apprehension. Home, as though it’s theirs, together. 

She tries to calculate if there’s a way out of this conversation. 

Home, like they’re a family. 

“You could die,” she says, the words coming out of her mouth before she can stop them. 

Jane looks bewildered. Maura’s heartbeat is feral in her chest, beating like a desperate animal.

“You could die investigating this case. Any case, but especially this case, Jane. Someone has already died.” 

For a transient moment, she thinks: can Jane hear her heartbeat too?

“I’ve almost died a lotta times, Maura,” she says. The tender, knowing rasp in her voice makes Maura blink back a sudden sting in the corners of her eyes.

“I know that. I know that,” she attempts. Being a homicide detective is not exactly a low-risk career. There’s danger, there’s always danger -- that is a fact she can put into words. What she can’t articulate is how today of all days she has seen that danger so vividly. 

She knows Jane won’t get it, and her expression says as much, but her brow is creased in concern as she takes Maura’s hand again.

“At the memorial,” Maura says, irritated that her voice won’t keep steady, “It just hit me that that could be—that I could be going to one for you.”

Anxious and uncomfortable, Jane’s body language shifts. Maura can feel her grip changing where their hands are clasped together and she knows Jane’s going on the defensive. 

“So, what do you want me to do, Maura?” she asks, “Quit my job and lock myself in a padded room? You know I can’t do that.”

“I would never ask you to,” Maura says in a small voice. 

“So why are you standing here sounding like every guy I’ve never wanted to date?”

Maura can feel her bottom lip tremble and wishes she could make her hands stop shaking, because she knows Jane can feel it.

“Because it’s my fault.”

Maura’s tired. The kind of tired that fatigues more than muscles and neurons; it sinks into her bones and the recesses of her mind and she can’t summon up enough energy to fight her guilt-ridden feelings anymore.

“It’s not your fault, Maura,” Jane says, her voice sharp.

Maura lets go of Jane’s hands.

“See, but you didn’t even need to ask what I was talking about,” she says, barely holding back a sob, “You knew I was talking about Bueller, which means you’ve been thinking about how it was only my phone call that put him in that car. That it’s _my fault_ he’s dead.”

Jane shakes her head, “You didn’t know, Maura. None of us could have known.”

Maura doesn't know how to explain -- her body on the morgue table instead of Bueller's; Jane's face staring out from a photograph. 

“Would you have asked for Bueller to switch with you if it had been someone else who called?” she asks suddenly.

“Probably not? But you’re my best friend, Maura, and you asked for my help. I couldn’t not come.”

“Frost is your partner, would you have left for him?” Maura asks, accusatory. She has a bone, now, and doesn’t know how to let go of it. “Korsak is your Sergeant, what about him?”

“Maura I don’t... know what you want from me, here,” Jane says, and she sounds almost scared.

Angry that Jane’s deciding she’s the one who can’t handle it, Maura blinks back the blurriness that keeps surfacing in front of her eyes and clenches her fists. “You don’t get it. You don’t get it.”

She knows she’s repeating herself uselessly, but she doesn’t understand how Jane isn’t connecting the dots the way Maura has. 

“No, I don’t get it, Maura, you’re not making a whole lotta sense.”

Maura takes a deep breath; lets the air fill her chest and brace itself against her lung walls, stretching them tight. Then she lets it out.

“If you die, Jane, I’m going to be the wife that’s left behind.”

Something finally clicks, and Jane seems to close in on herself for a moment.

Maura knows well Jane’s instinct to protect; she’s been a witness to the way she’ll round on anyone who thinks they stand a chance getting past her to Maura more than once. She’s attack-dog predatory, and on some deep, carnal level it’s always sent a little thrill down Maura’s spine.

Right now, though, she knows that Jane is stepping in to protect herself.

“I think I need to go.”

It’s not like Maura couldn’t have anticipated this reaction, but like with a lot of things today, her usual logic is proving oddly ineffective.

She just nods, and hopes that she can stave off the sob welling in her throat until Jane shuts the door behind her.

  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when i first wrote this, in my mind spencer looked and sounded like and was lizzy caplan and that is still true bc she's the best and her energy is great for this
> 
> also sorry this chapter is short the way i wrote the original is so mucky and weird and i guess i didn't care about POV changes at all and now i care maybe too much?? anyway, i'm figuring it out. please let me know if you like it or if this is a futile activity (look i know that it is. i'm not going to stop)

* * *

Maura doesn't see Jane for three days. It eats her up inside, her stomach aching and pitching like a roiling sea.

On the fourth day, she meets a woman.

It happens only because of an altercation at the coffee shop on her way to work: when a guy thinks because he owns a five-thousand-dollar suit he deserves to cut the line, Maura is too intimidated by his manner to say anything and the woman steps in -- seemingly from thin air -- to explain exactly why he’s wrong about his assertions. 

After he leaves in a mild fury, she orders Maura’s coffee and hands it to her as though she does this for strangers every morning.

“Your spoils,” she says with a grin, and her wide deer-dark eyes look at Maura like she could be worth fighting in a war for, maybe. 

Maura doesn’t even know what to say as she takes the coffee out of the woman’s hands, she just smiles right back, no less than completely flustered.

“I’m sorry,” the woman continues, “I hope I didn’t ruin your morning, I just hate it when people are like that.”

“No that’s--that’s fine, I know someone else who would have done the exact same thing if she were here,” Maura replies, thinking of Jane’s quickness towards predatory reactions.

“Your girlfriend,” the woman says, and there’s only a trace of disappointment in her voice.

Maura’s first instinct is to laugh, and her second is to feel a horrible, pressing sense of guilt. She goes with her third instinct, which is to brush off the misinterpretation and recover with only a little embarrassment.

“Just a colleague,” she says, and it doesn’t even feel like a lie. “I’m Maura. Would you like to sit?”

“Oh, no,” the woman says casually, waving her off and checking her watch. “I actually have to get back to work...” she trails off and rests a finger on her lip, something ticking over in her head as she looks at Maura. “But if you want you can buy me dinner tomorrow night. And I'm Spencer, by the way.”

Maura usually says no when other women ask her out, and it’s about Jane and it isn’t. It is just simpler to say no, most of the time, because women are complicated for her to navigate, despite the interesting dichotomies dating different genders provides. Scientifically, it’s interesting. Emotionally, it’s difficult the way women seem to catch and snag her somewhere inside.

But that is as much about Jane as it isn’t – the way everything lately is about Jane and it isn’t, and Maura finds herself wanting to say yes to Spencer much more than she wants to say no, this time. 

“That sounds nice,” she says, and something in the back of her mind tells her its a petty move to make. She chooses to ignore it.

Spencer smiles, pulls a business card out of her blazer and holds it out to Maura between two slender fingers. 

“Call me,” she says, her voice low in a way that makes Maura’s skin prickle pleasingly. “I usually get off after five.”

Judging by the smirk on her face, Spencer’s word choice was deliberate, and Maura finds herself blushing. She slips past Maura on her way out the door, and Maura catches the scent of lavender on the chilly morning air. Petty or not, saying yes is starting to sound like exactly the right decision.

On her way back to her office, Maura runs into Jane coming out of the elevator. Jane doesn’t notice her for a moment, eyes trained on her phone, and Maura can immediately see how exhausted she is. She’s never been able to get Jane to take care of herself, not really, but she has been able to bully her into the margins of nourished most of the time. Even in the days they’ve been apart, Maura can see that without her Jane has let this case grind her into something ashen and flesh-stretched. It worries her. 

“Oh, hey, Maura,” Jane says hesitantly, finally looking up. Her whole posture changes immediately, like she’s shoring herself up against some new and terrifying thing Maura might be ready to say. 

It hurts, and Maura wants to wring her hands to stop the tremors she can feel running through them. She resists it, because Jane will notice. Things have to go back to normal, and therefore Maura has to be _acting_ normal. She’ll deal with the hives about it if she has to.

“Hi Jane,” Maura says, her voice only a little too high. She smiles in a way she hopes will keep Jane calm, as if she’s wild-caught and trapped inside a cage. “I haven’t seen you around.”

“I’ve been busy,” Jane replies in a low rumble. “Listen, Maura--”

“Jane, it’s fine,” Maura says, cutting her off. “I’m sorry about the other day. The memorial affected me more than I thought it would and I didn’t mean--well, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Jane contemplates her for a moment, then nods. She doesn’t seem to have anything else to say.

“So are we okay?” Maura asks, hoping desperately that Jane isn’t going to announce she’s started hating her again.

“We’re okay, Maura,” Jane assures her. Whether she means it or not, Maura doesn’t know, but she feels encouraged.

“Are you free for lunch tomorrow?” she asks tentatively. She doesn’t know if it’s too soon, but there’s a clawing need in her to get things with Jane back to a place she understands. A place where Jane doesn't look at her like a spooked horse, her eyes all feral in her head.

Besides, she doesn’t feel confident that Jane has eaten a meal in the time they haven’t seen each other. She’d like to remedy that as well.

“Sure,” Jane says, and it sounds like _Jane_ , like the way she always sounds when she says _sure_ to something Maura asks. Maura can’t help but be buoyed by that.

Her skin itches only a little.

Let it never be said that Maura Isles can’t lie.

She and Jane go to lunch the next day, with Maura determined to be as normal as possible. 

Normal is refusing to let Jane pay at the fancy sandwich place they’ve been going to at least once a week. The kitschy larder-style shop appealed to Maura the first day she and Jane walked in, but it became a regular haunt after Jane prevented a shoplifter from making off with an armful of artisan preserves. Ever since, the young owner makes Jane’s Cuban himself and always adds extra pickles, bringing it to their table personally with his silly bandanna snug around his forehead. 

The same is true today, but when he brings over their sandwiches he lingers, grinning a wide, charming smile in Jane’s direction. His name is Ralph, Maura thinks, and he’s rather handsome. In a simple, boyish way. 

“Always a pleasure, ladies,” he says. “Any juicy gossip from the bowels of BPD?”

Historically, Maura has let Jane tackle anything under the header of _gossip_ , because Jane is much better at being able to tell what sort of thing gossip actually is.

“There’s not much to tell,” Jane says, using her long fingers to pull a pickle out of her sandwich. Maura watches the cheese string out, all silky and melted, before it disappears into Jane’s open mouth. She chews for a moment, and then through her mouthful she says, “My brother got dumped the other day, though. You met him, right? Beat cop.”

“Oh, the cute one with the hair, I remember.”

“She was too hot for him anyway, but he messed up big time. Still won’t tell me what he did.”

Jane and Ralph continue to make fun of Frankie’s romantic misdemeanours, and Maura finally feels a little better, like all their jigsaw pieces are finding their right places next to each other again. Like _normal_.

Ralph excuses himself to greet a customer a few minutes later, and Jane closes her eyes to groan in satisfaction.

“God that boy knows how to make a Cuban,” she says, still talking around her food. “Is it illegal to marry a sandwich in the state of Massachusetts?”

“I think it’s...” Maura hesitates. She doesn’t know if Jane will appreciate one of her “fun facts” right now, when their relationship is still so frazzled at its edges. It was a joke, anyway, right? “Never mind.”

“No, what is it?”

“Nothing, nothing. How’s the case?”

Jane darkens, though Maura thinks it’s not to do with her. Jane always darkens when a case is weighing on her mind.

“We’re getting there. The security guard gave us a lead when we questioned him -- said that the car the killer was driving had been impounded on that lot a few months back. We ran the plate and it’s registered to a Harry Wenn, local. Got a rap sheet. We haven’t found him yet, but when we do... it’s gonna come together. I can feel it.”

“It will, Jane,” Maura says, genuine. “You’re a good cop.”

She wants to reach out and touch Jane’s hand where it rests on the table between them. If they were back to normal, she already would have. She’d be testing her fingers along the metacarpals in Jane’s palm; tracing the burled knots of her scars. She wouldn’t be thinking about it like this.

Before Maura can will her hand to reach out, though, Jane pulls hers back off the table. 

“I’m gonna be glad when this one is over, Maura,” she says, running her hands through her hair and throwing it back off her face.

Maura watches her and wishes there was some way for her to help beyond the boundary of professional science. A way to ease the pressure of the case without Jane taking it the wrong way.

Jane takes another bite of her sandwich and frowns at her. “What? Did I spill on my shirt?”

She looks down, and Maura shakes her head.

“It’s nothing.”

“You keep doing that today," Jane says, and she sounds almost annoyed. "It’s never ‘nothing’ with you, Maura, what’s going on?”

Maura doesn't want to say, because they've been doing so well at being themselves again. Anything she says that implies otherwise will ruin all the tenuous foundations she's been struggling these last few hours to repair.

“I should get back to work,” Maura says, so she doesn’t have to lie, “I’m waiting on some labs. I’ll see you later, Jane.”

Without a look back at the table, she leaves Jane and most of her sandwich behind; completely bewildered.

  
  


That night, Spencer meets Maura for their date outside a burger joint on Mass Ave. She’s standing with two takeout bags already in hand and a smile that makes Maura feel flustered before she even gets out of her taxi.

“You ready to do this?”

“I thought I was meant to be buying you dinner,” Maura says, following Spencer to her car.

“Yeah well, that was a better line than ‘you can come meet me at Four Burgers and I’ll spend less money on you than is really appropriate not only for a date but just generally’,” she deadpans, and opens the car door for Maura to get in.

Maura’s mind flashes to Jane and her old school, masculine chivalry when it comes to Maura -- opening doors, pulling out her seat. Things Jane doesn’t give a second thought to. It gives Maura a slight pang in her gut that feels alarmingly like guilt; much the same as the guilt she felt walking out on Jane at lunch.

She doesn’t want to think about that tonight though. Spencer is a remedy to all her muddled, ocean-salty feelings about Jane, not a reason to dwell on them. She gets in the car, feeling paper crunch under her heel as Spencer hops in the other side. 

“I’d say it’s not always like this in here but... it is. I never get round to cleaning it,” she says, frowning at the dust lining her dashboard.

Maura picks up the paper under her foot. It’s a drawing, definitely one done by a child. Maura guesses no older than eight, judging by the skill and the rather abstract content.

“Do you have a child?” Maura asks. She’d felt Spencer was too independent to be a mother, but perhaps she’s misjudged.

“Oh, yeah,” Spencer says, stealing a fry out of the bags she’s shoved down in front of the gearstick, “About twenty, give or take.”

Maura pauses a second before she catches up, and she smiles at the joke.

“Teacher?”

Spencer nods. “Art therapy.”

“That’s a very selfless profession,” Maura says genuinely, listening to Spencer’s car sputter as she turns the key.

Eventually, it roars to life. Spencer steals another fry and winks as she nudges the bag towards Maura.

“How old are you?” Maura asks suddenly, estimating a ballpark figure but wanting to know for sure. Spencer had seemed older in the coffee shop. Her blazer had filled out her shoulders, and with her hair swept up in a bun her face looked more angular, regal. But in the murk of twilight, plain white t-shirt stark against her dark waves of hair, she looks five years younger. 

“My mother always said ‘you’re as old as you feel’,” Spencer quips, “But she was an alcoholic and I feel 85 so I don’t know what that says about either of us.”

Maura chuckles – however old or young she might be, Spencer makes her feel at ease, unpressured, and it refreshes her that she doesn’t seem to have any expectations. Maura likes that, and reminds herself that she shouldn’t be here looking for anything either. 

“I’m 31,” she says momentarily, and sounds almost embarrassed. “But I like you.” 

The car rattles as they pull onto the road, and Spencer pats the wheel reassuringly.

After a beat, Maura thinks: I like you too.

  
  
  


They eat their burgers on the roof of an apartment building after Spencer leads her daringly up the fire escape. When Maura asks, Spencer promises she knows someone who lives in the building, so it isn’t trespassing. 

It’s peaceful sitting on the edge of the city rather than within it. Eating greasy food while perched on top of a picnic bench with a pretty girl makes Maura feel younger, like she’s back in college and far from home. For once Jane is fleeting in her mind, all of her focus on Spencer and the unconcerned way she carries herself in the world. 

The _thwick_ of a lighter startles her in the middle of deconstructing a documentary about Iceland she watched last week, and Spencer looks at her with a joint held between her lips. 

“Do you mind?” she asks, taking it out of her mouth.

“Not at all,” Maura says. “Actually I was just reading an article about the origins of the cannabis flower and its use as a treatment for menstrual pains.” 

She watches, distracted, as Spencer chews on her lip to bite back a smile. 

“Did you know that Queen Victoria was given a dose of cannabis indica every month to help with her period?”

“I did not,” Spencer says, amused. She abandons the joint on the table to slide closer, the heat of her prickling at Maura’s skin. She’s looking at Maura’s mouth, and Maura feels a little giddy about how simple and inevitable this moment is. How there’s only one thing they’re speeding towards. 

“I’m gonna kiss you now, if that’s okay,” Spencer says.

Maura nods, her _yes_ swallowed by Spencer’s mouth. Her fingertips are cool on Maura’s jaw. Alight with something she hasn’t felt in a long time, Maura’s tongue brushes over Spencer’s teeth and she shivers at the feeling of fingers threading through her hair.

Letting out a hum against her lips, Spencer pulls away. Her mouth is pink and smiling, and her hand slides up the inside of Maura’s thigh. “You know how I said I know someone who lives here? It’s kinda me, I live here.”

Maura gets the implication. She leans into the press of fingers against her skin and feels them skid higher, breath catching in her throat.

“Lead the way.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fact: jane fully believes in her heart that she is the smartest rizzoli by a country mile when actually she is the stupidest rizzoli and lemme tell you writing someone this fucking unknowingly dense is HARD WORK

* * *

The fan of her computer is _whistling_.

If there’s one thing Jane Rizzoli can’t stand in a room where she’s trying to work, it’s _whistling_.

After the fourth time she slams her palm against the meat of the hard drive, Frost can’t help but interject. Another thing Jane hates.

“You doing okay, Jane?”

“I’m just _peachy_ , Frost. In fact, I wish my computer would make this sound every day.”

Frost rolls his eyes. “Is that a hint?”

“Are you the resident tech-wizard or not? Please put it out of its misery.”

Hopping up, Frost rolls Jane and her chair away from her desk and starts fiddling with, well, whatever it is that makes computers whistle. Jane breathes out a sigh of relief.

“Is it really just the computer bothering you?” Frost asks, not looking at her.

Jane frowns. “There’s a cop killer on the loose, Frost. Of course something else is bothering me. I’m going to get a coffee.”

It's true that the cop killer still being at large does pull on her mind. Harry Wenn interviewed clean and had an alibi for the shooting; the only helpful thing Jane got out of him was that his brother regularly borrows his car. It’s turning into a wild goose chase, and Jane hates geese.

But even that isn’t as heavy on her as Maura. 

Jane can’t stop thinking about her. She was almost frightening the other week, pacing half-vicious in her house about Jane getting murdered the second she walked out the door. Maura is rational to a fault, it was so unlike her to get so emotional about things so far out of her control. 

Her gut drops like a hot weight as she remembers the exact words Maura used before Jane ran out the door and back to the precinct. 

_Wife_. 

But Maura couldn’t mean—it was just a figure of speech. They’re both almost perpetually single, grasping onto men for what feels like moments before letting them drift away. They spend all their time with each other, like best friends _do_ , and it’s just an observation that Maura made in the emotion of the moment. Honestly, she would be the one standing next to Jane’s photo at her wake, because Maura is the best person to do it. She’d probably have organised the whole thing before anyone else could think about it, too. That’s just what Maura does. It doesn’t mean anything more than that. 

Coffee doesn’t actually seem like it’s going to help the way her stomach appears to be twisting itself into a pretzel, but Jane still finds herself in the precinct cafe a few minutes later.

“Oh, Jane!” Angela’s voice calls from behind the counter. 

Great, she needs something. Things just keep getting better.

“Hey, Ma, what’s up?”

“I got a call from cousin Patty last night wondering where your RSVP to her wedding was. It’s barely six weeks away, I can’t believe you forgot!”

Jane just manages to keep from rolling her eyes. It’s Patty’s second wedding, to the same man, and the last thing she’s interested in doing is sitting through a barf-worthy ceremony full of her half-tamed Italian family members. _Again_. Which is exactly why she’s ignored all six of cousin Patty’s calls in the last week. And her emails.

“Ma _please_ don’t make me go. I’ve already seen that movie, I know how it ends,” Jane says, her body slumping. She knows it sounds like begging. It _is_ begging, but she’s not above it. 

“Jane Rizzoli, you will not ruin your second cousin’s happiest day by not being at her wedding,” Angela says, “I took the liberty of RSVPing you _and_ your date. So I hope you already asked Dr Isles to help you find a nice dress, or I’ll be doing that too.”

Dr Isles definitely hasn’t helped Jane find a nice dress -- whatever that might be -- yet, but Jane remembers Maura agreeing to help her last time she complained about it. 

Angela hands Jane a to-go cup of coffee and all but shoos her out the door, as though right now in the middle of a homicide case is the right time to give Maura a call to go and do the worst thing ever invented: dress shopping.

She looks down at her phone. Still, it would be an excuse to call Maura and make sure things are okay. And she really is going to need help.

The problem is, things are... fine. Jane has never felt like her and Maura have just been _fine_ about things before. It’s new, an uncharted frontier for them, and Jane hates it.

She knows that it’s her fault. Maura isn’t the one running away from conversations she doesn’t want to have.

Maura isn’t the one who has found excuses to stay over and crawl into her bed at night. If Maura wanted comfort she’d just ask for it. She’d have some scientific reason for the synapses in her brain telling her to be upset, and Jane would pretend to understand, and then she’d hold Maura’s hand until she felt better enough to smile.

Jane used to have to seek Maura’s hands out. Maura has never been good at physical affection, Jane knows that, and it became almost compulsive to wrap her fingers around Maura’s so that she knew she was safe. She doesn’t remember when she stopped having to do that because Maura was already holding them out for her to take.

She finds Maura’s number, and hits call.

“Jane?” Maura’s voice asks. “I didn’t expect your call, is everything okay?”

“Hey Maura, everything’s fine. I just… how’s your day?”

Silence settles over the line, heavy and awkward, and Jane scratches a mark into her desk with a nail. The simple fact that they no longer know how to have a conversation is a stark indication of how bad things have gotten, and she sighs with the weight of it. 

“It’s going okay," Maura replies eventually. "I have a lot of lab results to sift through. The crime lab hasn’t been very organised lately.”

The gentle indignation in Maura’s voice makes Jane smile unconsciously.

“Whatever, Maura, you love organising. This must be like Christmas for you.”

Another pause. She can hear Maura breathe out in a way that sounds almost like a chuckle.

“I do enjoy the satisfaction I get from seeing things in chronological and alphabetical order,” she admits. 

The silence this time is longer, and Jane finally works up the nerve to ask what she wants to ask. She hates that working up the nerve is something she has to do around Maura at all now.

“Listen, Maura--I need your help. You remember my cousin Patty’s wedding that’s coming up? I really need a dress. Are you up for a bit of retail therapy soon?”

She hears Maura’s smile in her reply. “I’d love to help you find a dress, Jane. Is Saturday okay?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jane almost doesn’t recognise Maura when they meet outside the clothing store. Her head is thrown back in laughter, her hand around the arm of a pretty woman with dark hair. They look… oddly comfortable, considering Jane has never seen or heard of this woman before in her life. She wonders if they’re related somehow.

As Jane approaches, Maura sees her and waves. The woman with her smiles, and Jane wonders why it seems to have a nervous edge. She radiates an energy that Jane can’t quite put her finger on -- it’s something akin to confidence, like the kind of feeling people give off when they have really good health insurance. 

“Jane!” Maura says, and Jane has gotten so out of the routine of seeing her that she almost feels like she should give Maura a hug. 

“Hey, Maura,” she says, and decides against the hug -- just tries to imbue her words with the warmth of history as much as she can. 

“Jane, this is Spencer,” Maura says, gesturing to the woman beside her.

Resisting the urge to ask if her job comes with dental, Jane holds out her hand for Spencer to take.

“Nice to meet you,” she says, and notes that Spencer’s handshake is firm.

“Likewise,” Spencer says, and Maura beams.

“Angela already called me,” Maura says. “Twice.”

Jane rolls her eyes, because of course Ma called ahead to make sure Maura knew what kind of dress the Rizzoli family would _approve_ of at a wedding. 

“I’m surprised she didn’t ask you to pick out a date for me, too,” Jane says as she opens the door for Maura to walk inside. Spencer follows with a quick smile, and Jane wonders again why it seems nervous. Is she _that_ scary?

They follow Maura through the store; a beacon, and Jane finds herself watching her for the first time in what feels like weeks. The pull of her is so familiar and tidal, the throb of it rolling through her like a wave.

It’s hard not having Maura around the same way she’s gotten used to. Maura is meant to distract her from constant thoughts of killers; exasperate her with a steady barrage of facts and science. Jane is meant to find completely unexplainable joy in making Maura laugh just to hear the sound of it; feel it echo at the back of her skull.

Maura is meant to make her feel safe. 

“So Spencer, are you a doctor too?” Jane asks, feeling compelled to ask the woman following her best friend around at least one question to try and get to know her. Not to mention, she’s a little curious about where she’s come from so suddenly.

“Oh, no,” Spencer says, like Jane has told a joke, “I teach art therapy. Kids, mostly.”

“Spencer is a wonderful artist,” Maura chimes in, picking out a dress and draping it over her arm on its hanger. 

Spencer smiles, all bright and adoring; the way everyone looks at Maura if they have half a brain. It's nice to see someone look at Maura like that. 

“Do you know Maura’s mother, then?” 

“Oh, of course. Everyone knows who Constance Isles is.”

“Jane didn’t,” Maura says helpfully, and when Jane frowns at her, she winks. 

It’s nothing, and also everything, and Jane aches. 

“What about this one?” Maura asks. It’s a grey dress, and looks like all the other dresses she’s picked out so far. 

Jane shrugs. “You know better than me.” 

“What about a jumpsuit?” Spencer asks. Her fingers skip down the leg of one on the rack next to them, the red of it bloodier than Jane feels comfortable with. Too on the nose.

Still, it… is nice. Jane wonders how easy it was to see her lack of enthusiasm at Maura’s choices. Probably very. She’s almost certain her attitude about wearing a dress is visible from space.

“I’m not a dress gal,” Spencer says, commiserating. “In fact, I think the last dress I wore had frills and little pink horses all over it.”

She smiles at Maura, teasing, and Maura smiles back. Her eyes are all sparkly like they get sometimes when she’s looking at a guy she’s seeing. Only, it’s not like that at all, because she’s never seen Maura look so… _herself_ around any guy she’s been seeing. It makes the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end.

“Fashion _disaster_ ,” Spencer says with theatrical sincerity.

“Frills?” Maura asks.

“In fairness, I was eight.”

Jane feels oddly pushed aside by how close Maura and Spencer are acting, and for a moment she wonders… but no. Maura would have told her if she was dating someone. Especially a woman. 

Right? 

Something sickly starts spreading in Jane’s gut, feeble but persistent. The more she takes in of the two women in front of her, the less convinced she is that they’re in a platonic relationship. For a moment, she wants to flash her badge and find out for sure. But Maura would probably never speak to her again if Jane embarrassed her like that, and besides. She could be imagining it, and the embarrassment from that would be worse.

“I think Ma would have a fit if I turned up to a Rizzoli family wedding in anything but a dress,” she says finally, cutting off Maura and Spencer’s further foray into embarrassing childhood dresses.

“Sounds like my family,” Spencer says with a wince. “If you think Italian weddings are bad, wait til you go to a Jewish one.”

“You have a big family?” Maura asks, and Jane is a little ruffled. Maura never reacted like that when _Jane_ told her she had a big family.

“I feel like I meet a new aunt every year,” Spencer confirms.

Jane knows she’s not imagining it now -- that smile of Maura’s, all golden and flushed with something close to hunger… if Maura isn’t already dating Spencer, she wants to be. 

The worst part about it is, she doesn’t hate Spencer. Usually when Maura dates men there’s always something to latch onto -- some negative quirk that beds itself into Jane’s brain and loops over and over until she can’t stand looking at the guy. Usually it’s just half a lisp or a weird hat or he wears platform shoes in a way where Jane can tell it’s because he’s compensating for something. It’s easy to pick away at Maura about it, needle her until she can’t stand it either. 

That’s if she doesn’t find her own reasons to get rid of them -- family history of heart disease, eats pickles straight out of the jar -- it doesn’t matter.

But with the way Maura is looking at Spencer… Jane thinks she won’t mind if Spencer is the kind of person who has a dicky heart and eats pickles from the jar.

“Okay, Jane, can you agree to stand still for five minutes and try these on?” Maura asks, and Jane shakes herself out of her thoughts.

She follows Maura to the fitting rooms, leaving Spencer behind at the sale racks, and can’t bring herself to ask the question she badly wants to.

Maura stops on their way to eye a bright yellow jacket, and Jane watches her fingers move over the lapels and buttons like they do over a corpse. Methodical. Careful. 

“Isn’t this place a little below your price range?” Jane asks, feeling herself slipping back into a familiar skin. Teasing Maura has the ease of long practice, and it feels good to bask in it again for a moment. Some people need sunlight, Jane just needs to hear Maura’s exasperated laughter to stave off depression.

Maura turns from the jacket to narrow her eyes at Jane, her mouth turned up in the corners. “Don’t you always tell me Nordstrom has no business in a morgue?”

Jane bites down on a smile. “That doesn’t sound like something I’d say at all.”

“Mmmm,” is the only noise Maura makes in reply, but she’s smiling properly now.

“So do you wanna get lunch, after this?” Jane asks. “I’m starving.”

“Oh, Spencer and I had plans to go to that new Vietnamese place around the corner,” Maura says apologetically. “You can… join us if you like?”

Jane knows Maura is only being polite; that she’d be crashing their party if she said yes. Part of her wants to, just because part of her is a deranged lunatic who wants to dissect every inch of Maura and Spencer’s relationship like it’s a case she needs an answer to. She doesn’t even know why she feels this way -- any time Maura starts dating a guy she wants as little information as possible about it. It’s just that meeting Spencer like this has deboned her; left her unsteady and wanting for something solid to grip onto. 

“No, it’s okay, Maura. You guys should go ahead. Go now, if you want, I can manage the rest of this myself.”

“Jane, if I leave now you’re not going to come out of this place with a dress at all,” Maura says, and she’s using her no-arguments voice.

Jane simply nods, knowing she's right, and just hopes she can get through the rest of this ordeal without throwing up in a trashcan somewhere. For more than one reason.

  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s only a few days later that she sees Spencer again, after buying the least hideous dress Maura could find her and watching as she left the store without nary a backwards glance for Jane. 

She’d gone down to Maura’s office to ask if there had been any updates on the residue found on Bueller’s clothing, worried that the crime lab’s backlog was going to make breaking her case near impossible before the killer struck again.

They’ve come in though, finally, and Maura is in the middle of explaining that the residue is a combination of bee pollen and sugar -- making it extremely likely that whoever shot Bueller works as a beekeeper -- when Spencer breezes in with a paper bag.

Her gaze is at first only for Maura, but she smiles warmly at Jane when she realises she’s standing there too.

“Jane! Nice to see you again,” Spencer says, then turns her attention back to Maura. “Sorry for rushing in and out like this, babe, but I’m gonna be late for class. Here’s your lunch.”

“Thanks, Spencer,” Maura says, and there’s a flush of red high on her cheekbones. So they _are_ dating. Jane’s body feels like it isn't her own for a moment, just with the shock of it, and something indignant flares inside her. She's supposed to be the one who brings Maura lunch.

“I feel like I’m being super rude not staying to chat,” Spencer says, “But listen, Jane, I’m putting on a fundraiser for my school next Saturday night; trying to beg some cash off a few rich parents -- the soul-destroying stuff, you know. You should come along, it would be great to get to know you better.”

Jane flounders, wanting to say yes and no at the same time.

“Oh I… uh, I… can’t, sorry. I have a date that Saturday night.”

Maura looks at her oddly, and Jane bristles. Maura couldn’t know. It’s not like they’ve been spending a lot of time together lately.

“Bring them,” Spencer says, shrugging. “The more the merrier.”

Not sure why she feels she has to clear up the gender of her non-existent partner, Jane clears her throat and tries not to look at Maura. She’s started to know more and more often when Jane is trying to cloak her lies, now.

“Well, _he’s_ my boyfriend. Ralph.”

Maura frowns.

“From the sandwich place?”

“Yup.”

“Oh,” Maura says, and Jane wonders if she’s imagining the chafe in her voice. “I think he pronounces it with an _f_ sound. Like Ralph Fiennes.”

“Of course he does,” Jane mutters under her breath. She plasters on a fake smile. “Anyway, that guy. We’ll be there, can’t wait.”

“Great!” Spencer says, and leans over to kiss Maura quickly. “I’ll see you tonight?”

Maura nods, glowing, and Spencer winks at Jane as she heads out the door.

Jane _really_ wants to dig at Maura about that, but when she looks at her again Maura has fixed her with a curious, tickled expression that Jane doesn't like. Usually because it immediately predates Maura making fun of her for something.

“ _Ralph_ , really? He’s your boyfriend now?” she asks, edging along a laugh. 

“Yes,” Jane says, crossing her arms. “What’s wrong with Ralph?”

“Nothing,” Maura says, shrugging. That look is still on her face. “I just didn’t think that you were his type.”

“Well I didn’t exactly think Spencer was _your_ type,” Jane huffs. “Where did you meet _her_ , a gay dating website?”

“No, I met her at a coffee shop. She stopped a very rude man from cutting in line.”

“A hero,” Jane says, and she knows it comes out too mean. She can see it on Maura’s face.

“Spencer is a good person, Jane. I like dating her. I don’t know why you’re making a big deal out of this.”

“You didn’t think it was a big deal to tell me you were actually dating someone? Like as in multiple dates?” Jane doesn’t really even know what she’s getting annoyed about. Maybe it’s just the _casualness_ of Maura’s replies, like this isn’t as important to her as it is to Jane. She never said a word the whole time they were looking for a dress, nothing that would make Jane _assume_. It almost feels like she was hiding it.

“Jane, we haven’t been talking. Not like… before.”

Jane feels a weird clutching in her chest, like claws have dug sharply into the meat of her heart.

“You seem upset,” Maura continues, her voice a little softer. “Is this because she’s a woman? You can be quite heteronormative on occasion, so--”

“No!” Jane splutters, cutting her off, “Maura, it’s not like that.”

“Well what is it like?”

Jane can tell Maura has an answer in mind for her question, but Jane isn’t prepared to say it. She’s not _jealous_ . It’s _not_ like that. She’s been doing really great, heteronormative job of convincing herself it’s not like that ever since she met Spencer and that feeble, heaving thing in her gut came alive.

Ever since--

“You used the word ‘wife’,” Jane says. She doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but it’s sitting in the air now between them, neon and humming. Waiting for something. 

Maura sighs like she didn’t want this conversation to happen. Maybe she didn't. Maybe, like Jane, she was trying to forget.

“I apologised for that, Jane.”

“You apologised for making me feel uncomfortable, not for calling me your wife.”

For a moment, Maura just studies her, unblinking. It’s the look she fixes all her corpses with when she knows they’re hiding something from her, and Jane shifts her weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. Maybe they've both been hiding things.

“Do you think it was an inaccurate assessment?” Maura asks. 

_No_ , Jane thinks, before she can stop the thought unfurling in her head. She can’t say _that_ out loud, though.

“Yes?”

“Jane,” Maura says, and with the way her name rolls out of Maura's mouth it sounds like a sigh. “I’m not exactly an expert on female friendship, as you know, but even _I_ understand we don’t have a normal one.”

“What? Yes we do!” Jane replies, indignant. 

“If we had a normal friendship you would be pleased for me and Spencer.”

Not _jealous_.

“I… am pleased for you!”

Maura just looks at her again, then down at her hands where they rest on her desk.

“I didn’t have to be dating Spencer, Jane,” she says, and it’s in close enough proximity to the word _wife_ that Jane feels her fight-or-flight response kicking in like it did back at Maura’s house. Low key panic floods her chest, brimming up against her ribs, and she has to get out of the room before it drowns her. 

She’s not Maura’s wife. 

“But you are dating, so I hope you're very happy together,” she manages to bite out, scrambling, and turns on her heel to leave.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys read that awful "seduced then scorned by my work wife" new yorker article? BIG jane rizzoli energy
> 
> anyway buckle up folks this is a big, scary chapter that's gonna make us all furious apologies in advance!! please know that i DO, in fact, hate myself
> 
> ps. many thanks to tracy chapman who i listened to excessively writing the fundraiser scene and also kat who i texted excessively writing the fundraiser scene bc I HATE WRITING THINGS THAT MAKE ME UNCOMFY!!! she is a genius

* * *

The days start to tick by, and Jane finds that her and Maura’s _fine_ has become the new normal. It’s like they’ve taken a step back; downgraded simply to colleagues. Suddenly Maura’s house starts to feel foreign. Suddenly it’s Frost’s arm pressed against hers in a booth at the Robber rather than Maura. Frost is a gentleman and a good partner and his jokes are occasionally funny, but Maura is on the other side of that booth with a hand around the stem of her wine glass instead of the fabric of Jane’s sleeve and none of it feels the same.

It doesn’t even feel good the way it usually does when they break the case. Harry Wenn’s brother Philip is indeed a beekeeper, and inside a stack of old beehives Jane and Frost find not only the murder weapon but a whole lot of other potential murder weapons too. He confesses after not much prompting; case closed.

Usually there’s satisfaction in catching a killer, a feeling like a runner’s high that threads through her muscles and makes her want to find Maura. Always Maura, Jane’s hands seeking out the soft insides of her wrists or the curve of her hip. Two weeks ago, Jane would have said that it was normal, that she and Maura just gravitated towards each other after cases because they’re best friends who spend a lot of time together.

But that word has cropped up again, the one that makes Jane feel lupine and fearful.

It had felt mealy in her mouth, saying it to Maura in her office, and the grit of it doesn’t seem to have left her yet. It’s caught on the backs of her teeth and every so often it catches when she’s trying to think of anything else. 

She’s not Maura’s wife.

The problem is, the more Jane thinks about it, the more she thinks she might be wrong about that.

That knowledge makes her nervous. She doesn’t want to go to the fundraiser and see Maura enjoying herself with Spencer, because if she admits that seeing them together makes her jealous, she’s got a whole lot of other things to own up to as well.

She’s in the middle of telling Frost and Frankie about how much she doesn’t want to go when Giovanni bursts in the door of the Robber looking positively thunderstruck.

“Jane!” he calls out when he sees her, and sounds panicked. 

“You okay, G?” Jane asks. She can’t help but be amused -- Giovanni is a whirlwind at the best of times, but right now he’s reaching hurricane level.

“When were you gonna tell me you and Maura broke up?!”

Jane almost chokes on her beer as Frankie and Frost go perfectly still, their expressions of shock almost identical. 

Quickly, Jane gets up and ushers Giovanni to a different booth, a hand on his huge shoulder as he sits because he seems close to outright weeping. She gestures to the bartender, hoping he’s fast about bringing another two beers to the table.

“How did you… uh, hear about this?” Jane asks first, not sure she can even broach the fairly complicated and storied tapestry she and Maura have woven over the past year to Giovanni about their… relationship. 

“Maura,” Giovanni says weakly. “She came in with some broad -- _hot_ \-- and her car, looking for a new battery. They looked pretty cosy so I asked where you were and she said she was with this other chick now. They looked happy, Jane. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, well… thanks, Giovanni. That means a lot.”

“What _happened_?” he asks, after downing his beer in one go.

Jane just picks at the label of hers, not sure what to say. She wants to say a lot of things, most of them mean just for the sake of getting sympathy from Giovanni. She knows he’d give it to her. She could say Maura cheated on her with Spencer and they’d both make an enemy of the guy for life, which would almost be satisfying. She could say Maura broke up with her out of the blue with no explanation, which would mean she didn’t have to clarify anything.

She could say Maura thinks Jane is too afraid, which would almost be the truth.

She swallows, and takes a swig of her beer.

“Maura wanted something I can’t give her.”

Giovanni mulls this over for a minute, and Jane worries what’s turning over in his mind.

“A baby?” he asks. “Because I know like, biologically it’s hard for two girls--” Jane doesn’t even want to touch that one “--but if you were ever looking for a sperm donor…"

“Thanks, Giovanni,” Jane says flatly. “It’s not a baby. But it doesn’t matter now anyway. She’s with Spencer.”

Giovanni shrugs. “So? You can get her back.”

She’s slowly picking her beer label to shreds, and it feels ridiculous. Ridiculous to be sitting here with Giovanni, of all people, wanting to hear his advice for getting back the best friend she isn’t even dating.

“How?” she asks. “Like you said, they look happy. They’re even hosting some fundraiser for Spencer’s job together this weekend.”

“So…” he says, dragging out the _o_ and looking at Jane like she should know what happens next. “Jane! You gotta get all dressed up, smokin’ hot, and walk into that fundraiser so Maura can see what she’s missing. I’ll take you, if you want.”

The thought of Giovanni accompanying her to what will probably be an extremely classy event seems about as smart as taking a wild animal into a petting zoo, and Jane immediately shakes her head.

“ _No_. No, that’s okay, Giovanni, thanks. I know someone who can go with me,” she says, watching Giovanni’s face fall.

She’s still not convinced it’s a good idea, feeling like it will only do more harm than good for her to be around Maura and Spencer and their happiness right now. But as Giovanni bids her goodbye, still a little dour, Jane can’t help but think about it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She’d given up on a personal trainer years ago, finding transferring to homicide worked just as well as one. However, the precinct’s gym always calls when her _mind_ is particularly troublesome, and lately troublesome doesn’t even seem to cover it. Thinking the treadmill will be as good as anything to get rid of the tension etching itself into her bones, Jane barely even notices the cop doing leg stretches in front of her. That is, until she almost topples ass over candle on top of her. 

“Oh, Jesus; sorry Knapler,” Jane apologises, but the patrol cop waves her off. 

“No harm done, Rizzoli.”

Jane knows Sharnice Knapler, she used to work the same sector as Frankie a couple years back. Jane also knows that Knapler is strong -- she spends more time at the gym than any other female cop she can think of. 

It gives Jane an idea.

“Hey, I don’t suppose you’re looking for a sparring partner?”

With another person to occupy her thoughts, Jane finds herself settling even as she feels sweat soaking through her t-shirt. Briefly -- as Knapler gets her pinned and Jane can feel her knee pressing into the top of her thigh -- she wonders whether she’d feel better if she found a woman to sleep with too, just to get even. 

She quickly banishes the thought. She doesn’t want to get even with Maura, and she doesn’t want to sleep with a woman. 

Jane thanks Knapler when she can no longer breathe; can no longer feel anything but the ache in her muscles and the damp stick of material at her back. Then she takes a long, hot shower before going back to work.

She’s going to that fundraiser.

  
  
  


When Saturday rolls around, Jane is nervous.

Ralph picks her up exactly on time, knocking on her apartment door at 6:45. He’s taken his bandanna off for the occasion and actually cleans up... well, nice. More than Jane can say for most of the men she’s dated, who tend to turn up in a suit looking the way Jane feels in a dress -- like they want to get out of it before it chokes them to death.

Not to mention, Ralph is a perfect gentleman. 

“That jumpsuit is a _stunner_ , Jane. You look so dashing!” he says, and he’s grinning so enthusiastically that Jane can’t help but _feel_ dashing.

She’d felt like maybe it was a mistake, going back to buy the jumpsuit Spencer had pointed out. Like maybe it would be too masculine and all those taunts from her youth would come back to hover above her like spectres. 

But when she’d put it on in front of her mirror something about it just felt _right_. Like maybe there was something to all the fashion nonsense Maura liked to harp on about after all.

Ralph chatters away on their drive to the fundraiser, and when he stops outside an unassuming storefront Jane thinks they must have come to the wrong place. However, when she gets out of the car and looks in the window, she can see this has to be the place.

It’s a microbrewery, done up in lights for the occasion, and there’s an usher on the door who encourages Jane and Ralph to leave a comment in the guestbook and buy a ticket for the raffle once they’re inside. It’s all very… hip, and Jane doesn’t like it. The coolness of it grates against her like something ill-fitting in a socket, and it's made worse by the fact that Ralph seems very at home already.

“I’ve never been in here before, wow,” Ralph says, casting an eye over the bar and the space beyond, where pool tables have been covered over by black sheets in order to display what Jane can only assume is the art from the kids in Spencer’s classes.

“Me neither,” Jane says. For good reason.

Ralph drags her towards the bar, asking for a flight of the brewery’s best beers. He immediately strikes the attention of the bartender, who smiles behind his beard and starts pouring, chatting away to Ralph about regional hops and tropical notes.

Already bored, Jane scans the crowd for Maura. She can’t see her, and wonders if maybe she hasn’t arrived yet.

Then she sees a woman who looks familiar, and suddenly she realises she’s looking at Spencer. She’s only ever seen Spencer in a casual blazer and jeans or a leather jacket, but tonight she’s wearing a navy blue, pinstripe suit. And wearing it… well. Suddenly Jane feels silly for ever believing people might think she looked too masculine in a jumpsuit. Spencer looks _good_ , though, and it makes Jane feel a strange kind of way she doesn’t have a name for. All she knows is that she understands even more why Maura is so into this confident, beautiful woman who isn’t afraid to look dapper as hell in a suit. Why wouldn’t Maura choose that kind of person to be with?

“Jane, which one do you wanna try?” Ralph asks, and his enthusiasm is -- unfortunately -- charming. Jane feels bad about being so sour, and throws an eye over the beers. IPA, barrel-aged stout, porter, Dutch pilsner; it feels like she’s trying to read another language.

“What the hell is an APA?” she asks, bewildered.

“American Pale Ale,” the bartender supplies helpfully, but he’s looking at Ralph when he says it.

“American? Great,” Jane says. “I’ll take that.”

Taking the small glass Ralph hands her, Jane takes a swig and it’s only for the thought of her mother chastising her for making a scene that the beer stays in her mouth. High, sharp flavours hit the back of her sinuses hard, and she does her best not to grimace.

“Hoppy, isn’t it!” Ralph says, and sounds delighted.

“Mmm, like a rabbit,” Jane agrees. 

Then she gets distracted, because she sees Maura across the room.

Maura looks as beautiful as she’s ever looked, her hair lion-gold and cascading down over the dress that drapes around her body as perfectly as everything she wears. She joins Spencer, who is talking animatedly to a guest about one of the paintings hanging on the wall.

Once they're together, Jane expects to see Spencer all over Maura the way her boyfriends usually are. Men love to paw at Maura; possessive of her beauty and her status and the way it makes them look to have her on their arm. Maura only ever smiles about it, sunny and benign, but it makes Jane’s hand itch for her gun every time.

But Spencer isn’t all over Maura. They aren’t even holding hands.

Sipping her APA and wishing it was normal, regular-person beer, Jane watches Maura’s face as she listens to Spencer. It’s a familiar look, and Jane realises that it’s because she’s seen it before. Maura looks at her like that sometimes, when Jane is trying to make her laugh and it’s only working because Maura will laugh whenever she can tell Jane wants her to.

It makes her heart twist in her chest, and she grabs Ralph’s hand.

“Let’s go look at the artwork,” she says grumpily, and marches him towards the pool tables.

The art isn’t great. There are a lot of papier mache blobs and paintings that are just colours. One ‘piece’ is just smashed black crayons on a piece of paper. Jane thinks it looks a bit like a bat.

But Ralph looks genuinely interested, so Jane assumes there aren’t going to be any little in-jokes about quality she can riff on tonight. 

Spencer and Maura notice the two of them nearby and excuse themselves from talking to some other guests to come over. As they approach, Jane hopes her smile doesn’t look too forced.

“Hey guys, thanks so much for coming,” Spencer says, and sounds genuine.

“Our pleasure,” Ralph cuts in before Jane can say anything. “It’s such a great idea to put your kids’ work on display for people to see, what a perfect human touch for your fundraiser.”

Jane wants to roll her eyes at the sincerity in Ralph’s voice. Trust her to find a date who has good people skills.

“They’re very… talented,” she says instead.

“No they aren’t,” Spencer says easily, and Jane can’t help but be mildly shocked before Spencer continues with a knowing smile. “My job isn’t really to foster talent. I mean, if it’s there, sure. But this is therapy, before anything else. I’m just here to help them understand themselves better.”

“That’s fascinating,” Ralph says, encouraging Spencer into explaining exactly how her classes work.

He’s enraptured, but Jane finds she’s only half-listening. Her attention is mostly on Maura, who is looking at her with a nebulous, almost meditative expression. It’s unlike her to not have said anything yet.

“Yes, well, you’ll have to excuse us for a minute,” Jane says, taking Ralph’s hand and cutting off whatever Spencer is talking about. She's decided that maybe she doesn't want to hear whatever it is that Maura might be thinking of saying. “We are on a date, after all.”

“Oh I love that we’re calling it a date!” Ralph says, swinging their clasped hands. “We’re just a couple of straights, out on the town.”

Jane ignores that odd assertion and walks them right back to the bar where she orders another, larger beer. Then she proceeds to spend almost an hour ignoring Ralph in favour of staring at solely Maura, who in turn only has eyes for Spencer. 

When Spencer finally gets on the makeshift stage that’s been set up, Maura detaches herself from her side and approaches the bar where Jane is standing.

“You look nice,” she says in a low voice, one that sends a shiver creeping up Jane’s spine.

“Thanks,” Jane says, and feels a flush blossoming up her neck. “Ralph used the word ‘dashing’, which is very Disney-prince of him.”

Maura’s dress is olive green, the colour setting her skin aglow, and Jane wants to reach out and touch what’s been left exposed by the deep v of her neckline. 

“Well, you probably have more qualities in common with the Beast than you do with Belle,” Maura says, and pauses as Jane tries to figure out if she’s paying her a compliment or not. “But then, Ralph probably prefers that.”

Maura chuckles to herself. Not sure they’re having entirely the same conversation but not wanting to potentially ruin the one they are managing to have, Jane tries to change the subject. 

“The fundraiser seems to be a hit.”

Maura smiles, looking over at Spencer. “She’s so pleased so many people came.”

Jane follows Maura’s adoring gaze, watching Spencer command the small crowd on the other side of the room. It’s effortless for her, to be charming and comfortable and brave, and Jane hates it as much as she admires it.

“So what’s wrong with her?” Jane asks, thinking Maura must be dying to share the thing that she’s finally found that will make Spencer impermanent as a partner. They’ve been dating almost a month now, maybe eating pickles straight from the jar has finally become a possible winner.

“What?” Maura asks sharply. Jane’s heart stumbles over a beat. 

“Her… thing,” she says cautiously. “Come on, Maura, every guy you date has a thing, so what’s Spencer’s? Does she floss in bed? Smoke like a chimney? Refuse to take out the trash?”

To Jane’s slowly dawning dismay, Maura isn’t interested in being teased. She doesn’t even crack a smile at the joke, and crosses her arms over her chest. Jane hates that she’s looking at what that does to the v of her dress.

“Are you trying to find something to make me break up with her?” Maura asks, and her voice has that clipped, professional quality to it that Jane knows means she’s in trouble. “Do _you_ want to date her?”

“What? No!”

Maura seems to be waiting for her to say something, something like _no, I want to date_ you.

“I’m dating Ralph, Maura,” Jane says, as though Maura hasn’t noticed the tall, handsome man Jane’s been ignoring most of the evening.

“Right, Ralph. The same Ralph who has spent more time flirting with the bartender tonight than you.”

“What? Ralph isn’t _gay_.”

Maura just looks at her like she’s an idiot, but there’s none of the fondness Jane can usually see in her eyes. 

“No, we’re all heterosexual here, obviously,” Maura says, and there’s something close to venom in her voice when she says it. 

“What’s going on with you tonight, Maura?” Jane asks, her body flooding with the same panic that she’d felt in Maura’s living room after the memorial. Panic that Maura is about to say something Jane desperately doesn’t want to hear. “You’re being weird, even for you.”

“ _I'm_ being weird?” Maura says, her voice rising just a little. “Why can’t you just admit what’s going on here?”

“Nothing’s _going on_ ,” Jane says, knowing it sounds cruel, and petulant, and every other word she doesn’t want it to be.

Across the room Spencer finally finishes on the microphone to a round of applause, and walks over just in time to hear Maura’s accusation.

“No, of course it isn’t. Because you can’t deal with any aspect of your personal life, especially when it comes to your feelings about me, so nothing is ever going to _go on_ with us.”

“Because I’m not your wife, Maura!”

Maura’s hand goes to her mouth, and Spencer immediately strides forward, her body crossing in front of Maura’s just slightly. It’s the kind of protective gesture Jane knows she’s used in front of Maura herself, and it makes her skin burn with resentment.

“Hey, listen, I know we all get into some gay drama in our lives, but I think maybe you need to go,” Spencer says, and it sounds final.

With one last look at Maura, whose eyes are glassy and bright, Jane turns and stomps outside. On the way past the front windows, Jane glances back inside just in time to see that Ralph has _really_ hit it off with the bearded bartender, and she wants to cry. Just perfect.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


When she gets to work on Monday, Jane thinks about pressing the down button on the elevator instead of up; of walking into Maura’s office to apologise for being so terribly dense. She thinks of standing there and hoping that Maura abandons all sense of reason to smile at her and say that it’s okay, they’ll figure things out.

She doesn’t press the down button. She doesn’t see Maura. She doesn’t say a word, and her hands start to ache. 

The next day, it rains.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Ralph is closing up shop when Jane bursts in the door one afternoon, her phone still open on an Instagram photo of Maura and Spencer standing in front of a big octopus at the New England Aquarium.

She throws herself into a chair, rubbing her fists into her eye sockets, and addresses the table beneath her rather than Ralph himself.

“How do you know if you’re gay?”

Ralph stops cleaning the glass of the counter cabinet and smiles at Jane, who is still hunched over her own elbows and not able to look at him. 

“Are you very into softball?” he asks, throwing his rag over his shoulder.

Jane, finally looking up, frowns.

“Oh my god, are you?” Ralph asks, laughing. 

“Only because BPD has a league!” Jane says, defensive. She crosses her arms over her chest and frowns again at the look of utter joy on Ralph’s face.

“Jane, do you know what a stereotype is?”

“Shut up. Tell me.”

“I’m gonna make you an orange and turmeric smoothie,” Ralph says instead of answering, “It’ll make you feel better.”

“No offence, Ralph, but how is an orange and turmeric smoothie going to make me more sure of my sexuality?” Jane asks, lifting her head from where it's fallen back onto her hands.

Already peeling an orange, Ralph rolls his eyes dramatically, making sure Jane can see.

“I think last month’s fundraiser dine-and-dash means I don’t owe you an explanation,” he says.

“Fair point,” Jane concedes, and watches with vague disgust as Ralph continues to add far too many healthy ingredients into a blender than should be legal for a smoothie. They’re silent while he whizzes it all up, a sickly orange concoction that Jane isn’t sure she’s going to be able to stomach. 

When he sets the smoothie in front of her, she tries very weakly to smile.

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t know for a long time,” Ralph says, “To answer your question, I mean. I dated girls in high school, but didn’t have sex with them. I dated girls in college, and I did have sex with them. I didn’t get my first boyfriend until I was almost thirty. It just clicked one day.”

“What clicked?” Jane asks, worried that she’s misread her own desires. Nothing has clicked, for her. It’s been more of a gradual, scrambling slide.

“All the things I thought I wanted from the girls I was dating… I don’t know, Jane, it’s like when you drink a turmeric smoothie when what you really want is a cheeseburger, even if you don’t know you want it. And then suddenly you just know.”

“Women are cheeseburgers, really?”

“I think you’re wilfully missing my point,” Ralph says, smiling. 

“But I’m not… am I really _gay_?” Jane asks, thoroughly confused. “Everyone feels a little _eh_ on guys -- I mean, except for you, I guess -- but they’re all pretty average.”

Ralph is still smiling at her in that gentle, knowing way. It’s starting to become frustrating.

“Maybe. But I think if you thought you were straight you wouldn’t be here.”

“Okay,” Jane says, putting her hands out to try and physically stop Ralph from continuing. “That’s a little too… conceptual for me right now. Maybe if this smoothie were a beer.”

“So break it down a little,” Ralph says, nudging the smoothie closer to Jane’s hands. “You’re gay for Maura.”

Hearing it in such stark, un-couched terms makes Jane feel almost giddy with fear, even though she hasn’t been the one to say it.

Unfortunately, as much as Jane might not want to confront it; throw the feeling back into the deep place she keeps those haunting, gut-churning dark things; it seems she’s at a point where that isn’t possible anymore.

Ralph just waits for her to catch up.

“I… am.”

It’s so strange to admit it, about _Maura_. Maura is her best friend, her work colleague. It’s hard to reconcile that with the much more romantic things she's been thinking about recently. 

Though, as often as she goes to work with Maura, she also comes home to her – to her house full of light; a cranky tortoise; her own mother. They are so entwined in each other’s lives that Jane can’t really remember a time when they weren’t. She can’t imagine her life without Maura in it. 

“But what if it’s just Maura?”

“Then it’s just Maura,” Ralph shrugs, unconcerned. “But maybe one day it will be _just_ someone else. Regardless, you have to tell her, which is what you’re really worried about.”

“I _know_ ,” Jane groans, annoyed. “But she and Spencer are all perfect and attractive together, and I don’t wanna get in the way of that. Really. Maura deserves to be happy.”

“Do _you_ not deserve to be happy?” Ralph asks.

It’s Jane’s turn to shrug. After everything she's done to hurt Maura lately, maybe she doesn’t.

Feeling -- if nothing else -- less high-strung and confused, Jane tries to drink a little more of the orange goo in front of her before labelling it a lost cause.

“Thanks for the talk. And the smoothie,” Jane says, and gets off her seat. 

“Any time,” Ralph says. 

He watches her gather her things and head towards the exit. 

“Oh Jane, one more thing.”

Jane turns back, her hand on the door. Ralph’s face is still serious and gentle.

“Yup?”

“Do you drive a Subaru?”

She flips him the bird, and lets the door slam on her way out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops it has been.... a while. i haven't not been writing but i haven't been writing THIS writing and a lot of the stuff happening in here now is very hard to wrangle. i'm not a wrangler. things are bad folks
> 
> also do i know fuck all about fish? you bet

* * *

Bermuda is perfect this time of year.

That’s what Spencer tells her, anyway, a couple of weeks after the fundraiser disaster. They’re only a couple of months into their relationship, but Maura agrees that getting out of town for a few days sounds like a good idea. So Bermuda it is. 

She doesn’t tell Jane, because she hasn’t seen her. Maura hopes, instead, that the photos she’s posting on Instagram will suffice in explaining her sudden absence.

The problem is, even though Jane is hundreds of miles away, she isn’t hundreds of miles from Maura’s thoughts. 

She snaps a photo of the pina colada she's ordered; the fat glass so stuffed with umbrellas and pineapple wedges that the straw barely peeks out of it. Jane would make fun of her for ordering a drink like this. She’d make a face, appalled, and Maura would tease her back about ordering the same beer she does back home. No sense of adventure. 

Maura takes a sip, disgruntled. Of course Jane could make her annoyed even at a theoretical situation. Jane has done nothing other than make her annoyed since she and Spencer got here.

On her way back from the ocean, Spencer must catch her frown because she approaches their rented cabana cautiously. 

“Are the cocktails that bad or did the pina colada personally wrong you?” she asks, sitting in the chair opposite Maura. Her hair is tied haphazardly at the back of her head, sunglasses big and dark over her smile. She's wonderfully serene, clad only in a black-and-white striped swimsuit, an entirely opposite picture to the one Maura is sure she currently presents.

She smiles back, apologetic. “Sorry, I was just thinking."

“Dangerous,” Spencer replies, and studies her for a moment. “I know after the fundraiser you said you didn’t want to talk about it, but is this… thing with Jane like, bothering you?”

Maura wants to say yes -- Spencer has had more relationships with women than Maura has had at all, and could probably offer the insight Maura has been craving. But saying yes would mean unraveling the stitches holding her and Spencer together; Maura doesn’t think they’d survive if all the words she has about Jane were to come out as raw and scaly as they feel on her tongue right now. 

“You’ve just been posting a lot of... content,” Spencer continues, seeing that Maura doesn’t want to reply and trying to make it easier. “I wondered if it was for someone’s benefit.”

Sipping her drink, Maura figures out what to say. She doesn’t want to lie to Spencer, but she also isn’t going to say that all the photos she’s been posting _have_ been for someone’s benefit.

“I’m being a little petty, but I’m getting over it,” she says finally, and hopes Spencer doesn’t want to know anymore. She resolves to do what she says she’s doing, and get over it. She’s in a beautiful place with a beautiful woman, drinking a cocktail that tastes like she thinks paradise might if it were distilled into a glass. 

Before she does get over it -- completely -- Maura has one more question. “Is it terrible of me?” 

Spencer shrugs. “Babe, we’re gay. Half the time I think we invented petty.”

  
  
  
  
  


So Bermuda helps, in the end. Maura loosens her grasp on Jane-related thoughts; lets the sun bake sunscreen into her shoulders so they freckle and brown. She holds Spencer’s hand on a tour through caves filled with crystals and otherworldly light. They get drunk on the beach and have sex in their hotel room and go swimming in the pool at midnight. Maura remembers to have _fun_ , and while her thoughts return to Jane at idle times, she’s no longer _consumed_ by them.

She watches Spencer swim completely submerged in the pool, just titillating the surface of the water like a limber sea creature. This is when she imagines Jane here with her, wearing a bathing suit in some piercing bright colour -- canary yellow, maybe -- grumbling about sand getting in everything.

But this Jane, the one Maura imagines in the corner of her eye, is soft and mirage-shimmery; not fully-formed. She isn’t as surly in Maura’s mind, and it doesn’t hurt as much to think about her.

Being so far away, not having everything swelling up like a tide in front of her, it makes things... easy.

  
  


Back in Boston, things aren’t so easy.

Boston means seeing Jane, especially since a new case emerges only two days after Maura gets back from her vacation. It isn’t so easy getting real Jane to decamp her head when she walks onto their crime scene; serious and beautiful. The morning is still ashy and new, and seeing Jane haloed in it makes a sharp pain dart through her stomach when she looks up from the victim. It's been a while since she saw Jane up close, and her body traitorously wants to crane towards her like a growing plant towards the light.

Jane doesn’t greet her, which Maura was expecting. It makes her hunger for it, even while she stoutly refuses to greet Jane herself.

“Who’s the vic?”

“Female, early 20s. Garbage truck driver spotted her behind the dumpster about an hour ago,” Frost says. “Dr Isles, how long did you say she’d been dead?”

“Between eight and ten hours,” Maura says, addressing the victim’s neck. There’s foreign material there, translucent and shiny. She stops listening to Frost and Jane discussing the truck driver’s witness statement and finds her tweezers, plucking the material off the dead woman’s skin.

“A fish scale,” Maura says curiously, peering closely at it before dropping it into an evidence bag. 

“What kind of fish scale?” Jane asks, and when Maura looks up she can tell that even though Jane's gaze is elsewhere, she was looking at Maura only a second ago. 

“Too big for a goldfish, but I won’t know any more until the lab tells me,” Maura says, annoyed, because she’s perfectly capable of looking Jane in the face. “I don’t know the difference between fish scales by sight, Detective.”

She expects a retort, some ribbing remark from Jane that proves to Maura she’s rattled by even just being around her. But Jane doesn’t say anything. 

Next to them, Frost shifts awkwardly. Maura feels sorry for him, because he’s been caught up in fights with the two of them before. However, she's not sorry enough to stop pressing Jane for a reaction.

“It's a complex dermal phenomenon, but most fish scales are essentially clear -- it’s the skin that holds all the colour. The photonic crystals in their skin are fascinating, actually; there’s been a lot of research into how they form. It turns out they go against--”

“Thank you, Mau--we don’t need the science on fish skin right now,” Jane says, catching herself and hurrying through the sentence as though Maura might try to say something before she can finish. “The aquarium’s nearby, you think she worked there?”

She’s talking to Frost now, not the space next to Maura’s head, and Maura unfurls from her crouch to smooth out her dress. Jane’s eyes flicker over, then, and it's incredibly frustrating. Maura wants to grind her teeth, or shake Jane into looking at her properly, just once. 

But she reminds herself that this is probably just the way she and Jane are now. Living with her is going to be like living with a chronic illness or a permanent limp. She’s going to think about it sometimes, when that deep, orphic ache starts up inside, but other times it will barely plague her at all.

“Lets get her back to the morgue,” Maura says, interrupting Jane and Frost’s discussion, “Before we jump to anymore conclusions.”

This time, when Jane looks at her, Maura doesn’t bother trying to catch her eye.

  
  
  


The autopsy takes most of the day, and Jane is suspiciously absent from her lab. Maura tells herself approximately eighteen times that it doesn’t matter; Jane hasn’t been around for weeks. She barely remembers what it’s like to have her fidgeting on the other side of the autopsy table and making rude comments like they come as easy as breathing.

So she gathers evidence and makes her notes; whoever the woman is, she definitely spent time around the ocean and fish while she was alive.

Maura knows plenty about fish bodies, their skeletons and guanine crystal structures and the movement of their gills. She’s itching to tell someone about them, but no one comes into her lab until the early afternoon. 

Jane has brought Frost, because she no longer does anything without a reluctant escort, and Maura tells them both everything she’s learned about the victim’s body, as well as everything she hasn’t. She also doesn’t tell Jane that she knows she’s afraid of being in here with Maura alone, or that she can tell Jane is trying to fit back into their rhythm in front of Frost like there’s nothing wrong.

The longer she talks, though, the more she has to admit that the rhythm is still there -- rusty and buried though it may be. 

“The scale on her neck came from a _scarus frenatus_ ,” Maura says. “It’s a species of parrot fish.”

“Great, what does it look like?” Jane asks, and the question almost sounds normal.

Taking off her gloves, Maura opens her laptop and pulls up a picture. She turns the screen to show the fish’s iridescent blues and reds.

Jane is suddenly very close, like she’s forgotten they don’t do this anymore, and Maura draws in a breath. 

“They have these at the New England aquarium?” Jane asks in a strange tone of voice, and Maura takes a few beats to realise Jane is asking her because she was there not all that long ago. 

Her face burns as though Jane has just accused her of murdering the victim herself, and she crosses her arms over her chest. 

“I don’t know, Jane,” she says, using her name deliberately, “I don’t have a catalogue of their tropical fish species on hand.”

Frost clears his throat. “We’ll find out, Jane. Let’s go and visit the aquarium.”

Jane looks like she wants to say something else, or maybe yell at Maura again about how they aren’t married, or whatever it is Maura can see going on behind Jane’s eyes. But then all the fight and tension seems to go out of her at once, like a balloon, and she shrugs.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

She and Frost leave the autopsy room without another word, the door swinging silently behind them.

And that, Maura thinks, might be worse than anything else she could have done.

  
  
  
  
  


Things don’t improve from there. Every interaction with Jane feels like wading through a nettle patch -- the constant sting and scratch of it unrelenting. Maura is constantly on edge, and she finds herself wanting to spend as little time at work as possible.

She goes home, or she goes to Spencer’s, and she cooks. She makes spaghetti aglio e olio and roast pumpkin dhal, cauliflower salad and lemon-roasted asparagus. She finds herself browsing for cookbooks instead of shoes, her frantic brain soothing itself back to normalcy when she follows recipes for tortilla soup and complicated seafood paella. And oatmeal. She makes pots and pots of oatmeal.

Oatmeal the way Maura likes to cook it has always been a luxury. Jane has always laughed at her for it, because oatmeal should take five minutes, not fifteen, and _that doesn’t even count the time it takes you to eat it, Maura_ \--but Jane doesn’t know. Jane grew up on five-minute oatmeal, and bunny pancakes and eggs cooked by a loving mother. Jane has a dissonance with food that Maura has filed away and tried to subtly fix at any opportunity. It’s about survival, for Jane. Eating is for sustenance and when she remembers, or when Maura remembers for her.

Maura likes her oats steel-cut and toasted before letting them slow-cook on the stove. She doesn’t need them just to eat because she’s forgotten to; her oatmeal has spices and honey, a generous sprinkle of sliced almonds and those downy yellow raspberries from the farmer’s market. She’s made this three times in the last week, and it’s not a coping mechanism. Or, it is, but it’s healthy enough that Maura doesn’t feel like that’s what she has to call it. 

She’s finished a bowl of it on Sunday morning (dried cherries, banana, chia seeds) and is doing some yoga poses on the living room floor when Spencer lets herself in the front door.

“Hey, babe,” Maura says from under her own arms. Downward dog; muscles stretching pleasantly all the way up the back of her legs and through her torso.

“You shouldn’t greet people all bent over like that,” Spencer says smoothly, “Us hornier guests might start to get ideas.”

Maura giggles and walks her arms out so she can lower her knees to the mat, reaching across to the coffee table for her water bottle.

“You’re here early,” she says, watching Spencer deposit her things comfortably on a chair. She likes that Spencer has started to feel more at home here. With Jane’s absence, her house was feeling empty of company, and Spencer has been instrumental in filling the very loud void that’s been telling her to sell and move into a one bedroom apartment.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Spencer says, and she doesn’t seem overly serious, but no one comes over at nine in the morning for nothing, either.

She wonders if Spencer has noticed all the oatmeal, and thinks maybe she should get out ahead of it.

“You’ve come to tell me the cooking has to stop,” she says, and tries to make it sound like a joke.

“Absolutely not,” Spencer says. “I’m still thinking about that eggplant thing from the other night. You’re a fucking god.”

Maura giggles again, folding herself into child’s pose for a moment. 

“Work has been a little hard since we got back. The cooking is helping me centre myself. And the yoga,” she says, muffled. 

Spencer doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Maura wonders if she heard. Then she clears her throat. 

“Hey so that’s sorta what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Maura looks up, and Spencer is looking at her with an awkward, half-formed smile.

“I’m probably gonna regret this, because I really like you, but I think I need some clarity on… uh, you and Jane.”

“She’s my best friend,” Maura says. It’s automatic, even if it no longer feels entirely truthful.

“Mmm, okay,” Spencer replies, and sits down on the couch. “It’s just you were pretty upset after the fundraiser, and then you were pretty upset when we got to Bermuda, and now that you’re back at work you seem pretty upset… again. It’s a theme I’ve noticed.”

“Along with all the content I’ve been posting?” Maura asks, still trying to keep things light, because she’s not sure where this is going. Spencer is looking at her like she knows something Maura doesn’t; it’s altogether far too gentle and hesitant. 

“Yeah, there’s that,” Spencer says, and Maura didn’t realise until this very second that they’re having _this_ conversation; the _is this going somewhere_ conversation that Maura never seems to realise is coming until she’s barrelling full-tilt right into it. She’s never been good with people.

Feeling skittish, fawn-legged, Maura stands and comes to sit next to Spencer on the couch. She takes Spencer’s hand, smaller than hers; she feels Spencer's knuckles nestle into her palm. She thinks maybe this is the moment she's wanted -- someone to talk to to disentangle all her feelings from where they've caught and knotted like Christmas lights.

“I’ve never had a friend like Jane,” Maura says. “Someone so protective and aware of me. And it was friendship, at the beginning; no one had made me feel so welcome in their life as Jane did."

She stops, because it feels like too much is coming out at once, but Spencer nods and encourages her to go on.

"We got a lot closer after one particular case, with a serial killer, and I thought it was a normal result of the trauma -- that we'd just been bonded by it. I know it happens all the time--" she stops herself again, off track. "But a few months ago… I don’t know. A cop died and I think I realised it hadn’t felt like friendship for a while. To me.”

Spencer smiles, and it’s sad, Maura thinks. “You’d have to be completely bonkers to believe Jane doesn’t feel the same way, Maura. I didn’t really get it at first, because you guys had that secret-language kinda thing going, but when we were at the fundraiser… you don’t have that kind of fight with a friend.”

Maura doesn’t respond, because this is information she knows already. She just didn’t realise it was so obvious to everyone else.

“I guess what I’m saying is it feels like I’m in the middle of something here and I think I need an exit strategy. Before it gets ugly -- or worse, very beautiful for the both of you.”

“You want to break up?” Maura asks, her heart tightening.

“No,” Spencer says, immediately, “But I don’t want you to be with me because you can’t be with Jane, and I don’t want you to inevitably work things out with Jane and then have to tell me while I’m in the middle of being in love with you, or--however it happens. It’s a self-preservation thing.”

It doesn’t startle Maura to learn that Spencer has been thinking of their relationship in terms of love. Maura has been thinking about it that way too. She’s been enjoying herself; no matter how their relationship may have started Spencer has been the exact person Maura could see herself being with for a long time.

If not for Jane.

It all comes back to Jane.

“I’m sorry,” Maura says. She’s alarmed to find that there are tears in the corner of her eyes. 

Spencer picks up her hand, kisses the palm of it. Maura is suddenly furious at Jane for not even being here and yet having successfully corralled Maura into this corner, fighting to get out. It isn’t fair. 

“You don’t have to be sorry. Stuff like this happens, Maura. Things don’t work out.”

“But I really wanted them to,” Maura says, her voice cracking against her will. “I really like you.”

Spencer swipes a tear from the corner of her own eye. “I really like you too," she says. "But I think in this case love trumps like.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahaha god sorry. everything still sucks. catch me writing self insert fanfiction where a person who looks and sounds just like me meets spencer and we immediately fall in love bc damn what a catch
> 
> also strap yourselves in the next chapter is coming and it is trying to ruin my whole life. please let me know if you're still reading, or if i am just talking to empty cyberspace!!!!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> having now watched thru the end of s4 of this show for the first time i just have one thing to say and that is what the fresh fuck did the risotto island writers think they were doing with their romance plotlines that season (also any season. they are bad at this). how is jane PREGNANT when casey has been gone like THREE MONTHS and also she SHOT HERSELF in the UTERUS. the no homo isn't just strong it's also dumb as hell
> 
> anyway honestly thanks so much for continuing to read this nonsense, it's been 3 years since the show ended and idk what the hell we are all doing here but i'm glad that at least we're suffering together

* * *

It’s getting cold out. 

Jane’s hands have started to ache almost every morning, her bones tense and joints feeling gritty in their sockets. She’s been trying to put it down to the weather -- November chills, and all that. The fact that the scraping, pulsing aches have coincided with Maura’s return to Boston, she tells herself, has nothing to do with it.

She hasn't been sleeping, either, her mind butter-churning with images of Maura and Spencer in Bermuda. Maura smiling under an umbrella in her teal-shimmer swimsuit; Spencer hiding behind sunglasses and a middle finger at a poolside bar; Maura _and_ Spencer standing dwarfed inside the crystal caves. She hasn't asked about the trip or what prompted it, both because she doesn't need to and doesn't think Maura wants to talk about it with her anyway.

Maura has been akin to hostile, which is exactly what Jane knows she deserves. Jane can’t even look her in the eye anymore, too terrified of what she might find in there. What she wanted less than anything is for Maura to loathe her completely; all fire and wolfish glowering. But she thinks maybe they have crept into that territory, which is new and frightening.

The last time she stood anywhere near Maura, looking at a picture of a shiny blue fish on her laptop screen, she had felt as dangerous as high-tension razor wire. Or an electrical storm. 

Since then, all Jane’s had from her is a relayed message from Frost that the victim died of chlorine gas poisoning. Nothing else; no sprawling scientific explanations stretching wide like plains; no haughty clarifications. Nothing.

It has made all the time Jane's spent around fish in the days since positively unbearable. She's certain that after this, she’d be happy to never see one again. Their victim, it happens, never worked at the New England Aquarium according to HR. Jane had been disheartened, thinking her instincts were off, but when they’d shown her picture to the staff several people recognised her as a regular visitor named Hallie, no last name. 

It's the slow, boggy stage of cases Jane hates -- research gathering, talking to people who don't want to talk to her, unravelling everyone's secrets. Her brain feels like sludge, and her phone buzzing with a message is a welcome distraction from both the case and thoughts of Maura.

It’s a text from Ralph. He checks in almost every day with the same question, and every time he does Jane regrets their conversation in his sandwich shop all over again.

_You talked to Maura yet?_

Not admitting to herself that her hands are shaking even just reading Maura’s name, Jane sends back a very terse, _no, don’t rush me_. Her nerves are like sharp little teeth, biting into the ends of her fingers.

_Ok. She’s been back for a week which is not ‘rushing’, bitch._

“Hey, Detective Rizzoli?”

Jane looks up from frowning at her phone to see Officer Knapler standing awkwardly in the doorway. In the back of her mind, in the space that isn’t taken up by thinking about Maura, Jane remembers Knapler got put on their fish-vic case as an extra pair of hands.

“Hey, Knapler, what’s up?” Jane asks, scrubbing a hand over her face.

“I just wanted to let you know those follow-up interviews haven’t resulted in any new info. Everyone we talked to has a tight alibi.”

“Bummer," Jane says, watching Frost walk into the bullpen mouthing _who is that?_ "Thanks anyway, Knapler.” 

Jane rolls her eyes.

“Frost, this is Officer Knapler, she’s been helping us out with interviews on the case.”

Distracted by another buzz from her phone, Jane lets Frost and Knapler introduce themselves properly. She snorts when she sees Ralph’s return message.

_Next question. What are your feelings on flannel?_

_Flannel? Sure I love to wear it, out in the woods while I’m knuckle deep in a deer carcass._

She smiles, thinking that should be enough to shut him up. Since when does she seem like the type to wear flannel? Flannel has a pattern, and Jane doesn’t do patterns.

About to ask Frost if he'd managed to get any footage from the street next to their crime scene, Jane looks over at his desk and realises Knapler still hasn’t left -- in fact, she and Frost seem to have hit it off. Something knotty and alive curls in Jane's gut, and she's not sure if she's jealous of Frost or Knapler. It's only in the abstract sense; it would just be nice to be on the receiving end of romantic attention, but she still wants to laugh -- when did her thinking start to flit so casually towards including women? When did it start to feel like she and Frost could compete in the same dating pool?

It’s less than five minutes later when two more texts from Ralph come through.

_Baby no one says knuckle deep unless they’re interested in BEING knuckle deep, u feel.  
_ _But you can discuss that with Maura when u guys talk ;)_

Jane pings one final message back, and then shuts her phone in her desk drawer.

_Shut up_. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jane really does want to talk to Maura. 

She knows this. What she doesn’t know is whether Maura will be willing to talk to _her_. 

Really, there’s only two ways for this to go. Either Maura rejects her, or she doesn’t, and Jane has to locate the nearest thoroughbred horse for them to ride off into the sunset together on.

She hasn’t even thought about what comes after that. Telling Ma, telling her brothers, the guys at work. As it has since Maura got back from Bermuda, the enormity of the situation threatens to overwhelm her like floodwater. 

She needs a drink.

  
  
  
  
  
  


As soon as she steps into the Robber, Jane orders two beers and tells the bartender to open a tab. She’s uncertain how long and how much alcohol it’s going to take before she’s got enough fortitude to get herself to Maura’s front door. 

“You going for the double fist tonight, Janie?” Frankie asks when she sits down in the booth opposite him and Frost.

Jane shrugs. “Maybe. Why don’t you mind your own business?”

“It’s my business if you’re becoming an alcoholic,” Frankie retorts. “I’m not taking you to AA meetings.”

Scowling, Jane takes another long slug of her beer and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I just need to talk to Maura, all right?”

“Is she coming here?” Frankie asks, sounding excited. “I haven’t seen her since she and Spencer got back from Bermuda and I have a _lot_ of questions about that boat they were on.”

“What _boat_?” Frost asks. “How have you seen a boat?”

“Probably because I follow Maura on Instagram, _tech wizard_ ,” Frankie says in a mocking voice, and pulls out his phone presumably to show Frost the exact photos that have burned themselves into Jane's head like red hot brands.

“Whoa, that’s Spencer?” Frost asks, incredulous, and leans in for a better view of Frankie's phone. “I figured she was pretty but… wow.”

“Jesus Frankie, are you just outing Maura to the whole of BPD now?” Jane asks, and leans over the table to smack Frankie on the side of his head.

“Ow! Geez, sis! It’s not like it’s a secret! Their pictures are public.”

Jane just scowls again, looking around the room to see if there are any fire alarms handy. If she pulls it, they'll all be forced to leave the bar and then she'll have no choice but to go to Maura's.

“Oh wait, that’s your problem, isn’t it? That's why you're... like this,” Frost says, looking up from Frankie’s phone almost triumphantly and gesturing in her direction. Jane silently wills him not to continue with her brother right there.

“What’s her problem?” Frankie asks.

“Shut up Frost.”

“What’s Jane’s problem? Tell me!”

“Shut _up_ , Frankie,” Jane says, and feels as though she’s slowly being driven mad.

Frost looks at her, all calm and sincere, and Jane hates that he knows her so well now. Stupid partners.

“Why aren’t you like this when Maura dates guys?” Frost asks, and Jane gets the feeling he’s legitimately curious.

“Because Maura doesn’t... date guys!” she says, annoyed. “When was the last time Maura had an honest-to-god proper boyfriend?”

Frankie, for his part, tries to think. Frost just shrugs. 

“It’s a little hard for her to have a boyfriend when she spends all her time with you.”

“Yeah, because we’re best friends and we like each other. We don’t _like_ spending time with men. Present company excluded, most of the time.”

“Mmm, so you _are_ into Maura,” Frost says, ignoring the jab. “You can admit it.”

"Jane's into Maura?" Frankie asks.

“I’m not admitting anything, I’m just stating facts,” Jane snaps, not wanting to give Frost the satisfaction of being right. 

“Okay, sure.”

Jane laughs stupidly and hides her face in her hands. “God, this is ridiculous. I feel ridiculous. I’m going to Maura’s.”

“Get it girl,” Frost says, and Jane flips him the bird as she gets out of the booth and shoves her empty beer bottles towards him.

“Shut up. You’re paying for these.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s late when Jane finally builds up the courage to get out of her car. She’s been parked up outside Maura’s long enough that the skyline has slowly muddled into inky black, the streetlights popping on above her. It’s simple, in theory. She’s been telling herself this for over an hour. Knock on the door, tell Maura you have feelings for her. 

No problem.

It's the eighth time Jane tells herself that she actually manages to open the door and stand up. Her legs feel leaden, her whole body singing with nerves as she walks through the entrance-way to Maura’s house. Lifting a hand wracked with tremors, she knocks on the door.

She can hear Maura walking over after only a few seconds of silence. Jane hopes desperately that she won’t check who's there, see it’s Jane outside and immediately walk away. 

But she’s also terrified of what’s going to happen if Maura _does_ let her in. She’s terrified Maura will turn her down because she’s already found someone she can commit to. Someone she doesn’t have to wait around for and hope feels the same way, someday, when they finally have their shit together. 

She’s terrified that if she kisses Maura she’ll never stop.

When she opens the door, Jane swallows every word she'd thought of to say, all of them seeming completely inadequate for the woman standing illuminated before her like some kind of deity.

"Uh, hey."

“What do you want, Jane?” Maura asks, and Jane can tell she already thinks opening the door was a waste of time. Jane suddenly feels stupid, standing frozen on Maura’s doorstep in the nice shirt and blazer and boots she managed to pick out herself. She feels mismatched and awkward and weak, and wonders if she should just get back in her car and go home and let Maura move on with her life. 

“I’m sorry for coming over so late. I needed to talk to you.”

There’s a beat and Jane doesn’t know if Maura is going to let her in or shut the door in her face. Then she steps back and waits, making sure Jane really wants to do this.

Jane swallows hard and steps over the threshold. It’s been weeks since she’s been in Maura’s house, long enough that the familiarity takes a minute to sink in. Jane has missed the smell of it; like linen and sandalwood, and the floral smell from whatever expensive oil diffuser Maura’s been using this month. It smells comforting. Like Maura. Like home.

“So where’s Spencer?” Jane asks, walking into the kitchen. Maura’s been cooking recently; all her clean dishes are stacked up on the drying rack. Tupperware filled with something undoubtedly complex and delicious sits cooling on the counter next to the fridge.

“She’s not here tonight,” Maura says, not looking at her. “No one is.”

Jane could have guessed that herself, but she wanted to make sure that they don’t have to suffer any… interruptions.

“Not even Ma?”

“Nope.”

Maura seems content just to answer questions rather than offer anything up herself, and Jane knows she deserves that. For a moment, Jane just looks at her. She is soft and sun-radiant in the kitchen light, and Jane knows with sudden, perfect clarity that she’s in love with her. 

“So I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Ralph and I broke up.”

Maura’s mouth twitches.

“It just wasn’t meant to be, I guess, since we’re both--since he’s gay and I’m… well. He’s been sending me a lot of questions about softball and flannel,” Jane says, moving a pen idly around Maura’s kitchen counter with a finger.

“That’s unsurprising,” Maura replies.

“Yeah. Well. You’ve always been better than me at… figuring stuff out. Feelings.”

There’s silence, and Jane knows she’s supposed to fill it, since she’s the one who came over here demanding to talk to Maura. She looks as tired as Jane feels; all stringy and ground-up like old gristle. 

What is she supposed to tell her now? There are all those feelings that bloom late at night, or there are the ones that unfurl in the middle of the day when Maura is perched over a body but smiling at her like world only exists in the air between the two of them. There’s a wild garden of of them that she could tell Maura about -- about her precise hands and her laughter and the way she says Jane’s name so that it sounds like _I love you_.

But.

“I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk,” Jane says eventually, not ready for the rest of it just yet.

“You have been a jerk,” Maura says, leaning against her oven, and she sounds almost indignant in her hurt.

“I know, Maura. I’m just… you caught me off guard that day, after the memorial, and it took me a long time to get it, you know. That my feelings for you--or, that I’m in…”

She doesn’t know if she can get to the end of that sentence, whether she’ll ever get there. Her mouth stumbles over the kinds of words she’s said to Maura a million times in a different context; in a different iteration of their relationship where they’re just friends and Maura hasn’t pried the shell of her heart wide open.

She knows Maura is going to be the one to say it first, if they ever get past this oozing, stretched-out moment in her kitchen. They’re always this way; Maura, fearless, forges ahead and Jane has no choice but to follow her down the rabbit hole.

Maura’s still looking at her and it’s delicate, calculating; like she’s trying to figure out how genuine Jane is being.

“I’m not kidding around, Maura, I promise. I’m serious.” 

Maura still doesn’t say anything, and Jane fidgets with her own thumbnail, wanting to do something that Maura can’t second guess or misinterpret. Something that they can hold onto.

“I wanna…”

Jane trails off, but she feels herself getting closer to Maura; feels like Maura knows what she wants to do anyway. She can see that Maura’s pupils are starting to blow, and steps close enough to watch the way her tongue is moving behind her teeth.

“Jane,” she says, and her voice is just honey, slick and sweet. 

Jane’s heart is galloping in her chest now, but she can’t stop her hand from reaching out and crawling over Maura’s hip. She watches her own fingers press into the softness of skin and fabric; watches the way her grip makes Maura’s breath catch high in her throat. 

“Jane,” Maura says again, and this time it’s a warning. 

Jane runs her tongue over her lip and Maura’s eyes drop to follow it. Jane’s insides flood with heat knowing that Maura is thinking about kissing her; that this is something that’s actually, really happening between them.

Feeling half-mad and dizzy, Jane leans in until she can see every eyelash on Maura’s face; until she can hear the breath coming out of her mouth.

“Is Spencer going to have something to say about this?” she asks, guessing the answer.

Maura’s mouth is only a whisper away, and she’d never have let Jane this close, except if...

“We broke up,” Maura says and they're both already moving before she can finish saying the words. Maura’s hand fists into her shirt, knuckles digging hard into her chest. She pulls Jane toward her and the last word is swallowed where their lips meet. 

Maura’s mouth is hot and open and Jane shudders, cupping Maura’s jaw. Time ceases to be a concept she understands. Jane doesn’t feel like she can kiss Maura hard enough, licking into her mouth until she can hear her moan, her body rucking up all hunger-needy against Jane’s.

Her hand is in Maura’s hair; Maura’s teeth nip at her lip; every one of her nerve endings feels like it’s on fire as she backs Maura up against the oven. There’s nothing tender about this, just a dam-burst of frustration and desire and realisation.

So this is what it’s supposed to feel like.

Kissing men has been fine. Kissing Maura feels like she’s just learned what her mouth was really made for. 

She groans Maura’s name into her own mouth until it doesn’t sound like a word anymore, her hands roaming nomadic over Maura’s ribs. She wants them higher, she wants Maura’s tits in her hands and on her tongue and it’s strange to know she wants that, like someone else has put the thought there. She wants to undo the zipper on Maura’s pants, too, she wants her fingers under Maura’s shirt, on her skin, in her mouth, she wants-- _wants_.

Maura’s hips are restless against Jane’s, searching for friction, and Jane shoves the long muscle of her thigh between Maura’s legs. The way Maura grinds against her is thrilling, like discovering a map of a new world, and Jane smears her mouth across her cheek and down her neck, needing to make a mark there.

Suddenly Maura’s fist flattens, her palm flush to Jane’s scudding heartbeat. Then she shoves, pushing Jane back away from her. 

The startled quiet after their kiss seems to stretch for minutes, foggy with the thrum Jane can feel all through her body. Maura’s lower lip is shiny and red and she runs her tongue over it like stings the way Jane’s lips do.

“What--”

“You’re not being fair, Jane,” Maura says, her breath still coming in pants.

“Fair?” Jane asks, just as breathless.

“You don’t just get to decide that you’re ready to be with me,” Maura says, and she sounds indignant again, “I haven’t been sitting here waiting for you to do that. I’ve been trying to move on.”

“And have you?”

“Don’t, Jane,” Maura says, and it sounds dangerous.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. “

Maura runs a hand through her hair, wipes it down over her mouth. Jane desperately wants to kiss her again.

“Spencer hasn’t even been gone a week, and she broke up with me just when I was thinking about--ugh! Things were _good_ , Jane. I really liked her, but you were always going to be in the way, and I’m--I’m _mad_ at you about it.”

“Okay.”

“You can’t just say ‘okay’!” Maura half-yells, exasperated and fraught.

“O--oh no, that sucks?” Jane tries. “You have to help me out here, Maura. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Show me.”

“What do you… mean?” Jane asks, thinking she’s done a fairly obvious job of showing Maura how she feels. Her mouth still tingles from it.

“You can show me how serious you are,” Maura says. “Take me on a date.”

"I--okay?" Jane says, hesitant. She's already fiddling with the hem of her shirt out of pure nervousness, trying to think about the logistics of that happening. She’s never planned a date before, and Maura is considerably more… upmarket than her boyfriends have been. It’s also a _date_ \-- a real, tangible romantic event -- with _Maura_.

“Okay,” she says, more confident this time, and says the first time that comes into her head. “Friday, seven o’clock?”

“You can pick me up,” Maura says. She steps forward, back into that buzzing, dangerous space that makes Jane feel like all her organs are about to climb out of her throat. "And you can wear that red jumpsuit from the fundraiser."

Jane just manages to refrain from audibly gulping, and nods. 

A date it is.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well after adding 15k or so to this story it is finally done and dusted. i feel like we have all come a long way and grown as people or maybe i have just finally lost my mind? either way, good job us

* * *

Maura doesn’t like to be nervous.

Jane isn’t late for their date, not yet; her clock only reads 6:49PM. Maura knows Jane's coming, too, because she'd seen her earlier today. Jane had been professional all the way through their discussion of the case in Maura’s office, even if her gaze had dropped to Maura's mouth more often than usual. But more importantly, before she walked out the door, she'd turned back and said, “See you tonight?”

Maura’s heart had beat faster and hadn’t stopped.

She doesn't like to be nervous, because nervousness implies that she’s about to relinquish control over a situation. Maura understands scientifically that it’s a normal response, and the fluttering in her stomach is just all the blood from her digestive system being redirected to where it’s needed. She can feel it flooding her limbs; muscles taut. It’s _normal_ , but she still wishes her fingers wouldn’t shake just picking up her phone to see if Jane has sent her a message.

Control has always been Maura’s strength, but Jane has a way of rattling her grip on it just like she did the other night in her kitchen.

She wonders if Jane could tell how cobweb-thin her resolve had been, how close Maura was to just letting her tease a mark onto her neck that everyone could see; how close she was to shoving her own hand down the front of her pants so she could rut against her fingers until she came with Jane's name spilling out her mouth. 

She’d only pushed Jane away because it wouldn’t have solved anything. It wouldn’t have soothed her; her anger would have remained and eaten at her in great snarling bites until she never wanted to spend a second with Jane ever again.

At least tonight, on a date, they have time together that’s constrained by well-worn etiquette they both understand. There are margins to work within, and Maura has had the time to settle since then; her emotions aren’t quite so muddled and fraught. Spencer’s presence isn’t so fresh.

There’s a knock at her door. Maura’s heart feels like it physically jumps in her chest, and she can feel it hammering as she turns the doorknob to reveal Jane on the threshold.

Shes worn the jumpsuit, just like Maura asked. She’s also pulled her hair into a messy bun, much like the one she conjures at crime scenes if her hair isn’t behaving enough for a ponytail. It’s not the hour Maura spent getting her own hair to behave, but it’s more than Jane’s ever done for an outing they’ve been on together. Maura knew she was serious when she'd said she was serious, her face reddened and shocked by their kiss. But it’s different to see it like this, to see it displayed in her appearance.

Like Maura, Jane looks nervous. 

“Hey, are you ready to go?” she asks, and Maura nods, not bothering to try and make Jane come inside.

“Let me just get my purse.”

When Maura follows Jane out to the street, she sees a very familiar car sitting where Jane usually parks her unmarked. 

“Is that Julietta?” Maura asks, recognising the bright candy-red of Giovanni’s precious Alfa. 

“I convinced him to let me borrow it,” Jane says, pride slipping into her voice as she pats the shiny bonnet.

“How?” Maura asks, forgetting for a moment that she's not supposed to be letting Jane off so easy. However, she's sure Giovanni letting his car out of his sight can’t involve anything other than blackmail.

“Well, he was under the impression that we’d broken up recently and I might have told him I needed to use his car to win you back.”

Maura blushes, remembering exactly how torn apart Giovanni had been when he learned that she and Jane were, well…

“I never told him we were broken up,” she says, and tries not to sound defensive under the teasing look Jane is giving her. She’d never used those words, specifically, so it wasn’t like she’d lied.

Jane, suddenly a lot less teasing, looks at the ground. She traces a line against the pavement with the toe of her shoe. “It felt like we were broken up.”

Maura doesn’t really know what to say to that. She’s spent so long having to wonder what Jane is thinking or feeling, to hear something like that come out of her mouth is almost revelatory. 

“I’m nervous,” Maura admits, hoping that Jane understands it’s meant as an offering of solidarity; a confession for a confession. “I’m actually trying very hard not to hyperventilate. Vasoconstriction.”

She expects a joke from Jane, or even a look to imply she’s got no idea what Maura is talking about. 

“Me too, Maura,” is what she says instead, rough and disquieting. 

Maura wonders just when exactly Jane learned to be so candid.

  
  
  
  


Jane drives them swiftly past BPD and down the side street they always take to get to their most well-trodden block of restaurants; Julietta humming around them. Maura is used to seeing Ralph’s sandwich shop dark at this time of night, lit only by the Coca-Cola lights on his fridges. 

But tonight as they park up outside there is the creamy, wavering quality of candlelight coming from inside, and Maura feels a sea swell in her chest. Jane gets out of the driver's side and opens the car door for her to step out. 

“How many people have you lied to for this date, Jane?” she asks, and Jane grins. 

“Enough. Come on.”

When they walk inside Maura remembers the last time she was in this place with Jane, their relationship so close to fracturing already. At least this time her nerves aren’t from trying to pretend things are normal. She and Jane have sailed so far past normal now that all she can do is lean bracingly into the wind of it.

Ralph grins at them from behind the counter. “Evening, ladies. Take a seat.”

There’s a table in the middle of the shop that has been set with two places, and it’s simple but elegant in a way that Maura recognises is for her. A spray of lavender and yarrow sits in a vase in the middle of the table. As they sit down, Maura wonders if their common healing properties have something to do with their presence.

“Did you know that yarrow was said to be used by Achilles to heal his soldiers after battle?” Maura asks. “Some people say that’s why the plant’s scientific name is _achillea millefolium_.”

“I did know that,” Jane says, tipping her chin up. The haughty air it gives her makes Maura bite back a smile.

“I didn’t realise you had such an interest in naturopathy.”

“I’m just trying to impress someone,” Jane quips. “It seemed easier than becoming an art therapist.”

“Spencer has an adult class, maybe you should consider joining it,” Maura says, her attempt at keeping a straight face finally failing. Jane has been herself again, that easy leaning presence Maura has missed having around, and she finds that her lingering animosity is almost a ghost.

“Wow, Maura. _Rude_.”

Maura giggles at the expression of disdain on Jane’s face, and reaches her hand across the table to rest her fingers over Jane’s. 

“Art therapy is a great resource for reducing aggression, Jane. It’s well documented.”

Jane’s frown deepens. “Stop making fun of me.”

“We’re also in a kickball league together, Jane,” Ralph pipes up from behind the counter, “If you need to get out your aggression in a different way I totally recommend it.”

“Thank you, Ralph,” Jane says pointedly, her eyebrows raised. Ralph takes the hint and falls quiet again, concentrating on the finishing touches of their dinner. 

Jane turns back to Maura and suddenly looks nervous again, hunching in on herself.

“Anyway, I actually had something to ask you. You can say no, because I know how much you hate not being given _notice_ for things, but uh… Ma RSVPed me to cousin Patty’s wedding with a plus one, and it's next weekend.”

“You don’t want to go with Ralph?” Maura asks, smiling.

“Very funny.”

“I told her she has to pay me if she wants me to be her beard again,” Ralph says, bringing over two plates of food.

Maura giggles again at Jane’s frown, and looks down at her artfully-arranged plate of pasta. It seems like Ralph isn't just a talent at sandwiches.

“Spinach ravioli with winter greens, basil pesto and a balsamic reduction,” Ralph says proudly. “Jane, yours have sausage in them, because I took your threats of violence very seriously.”

Jane’s frown turns into a fully-fledged smile, and she doesn’t even wait to see if Maura is ready to start before she begins shovelling the pasta into her mouth. Maura goes through the ritual of spreading a napkin across her lap, then takes a cleansing sip of water before picking up her fork and answering the question Jane never actually asked her.

“Of course I’ll go with you, Jane.”

A forkful of pasta just above her plate, Jane pauses. “It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ waiting in the wings there, Maura.”

“But it has to be a date.”

“Another date? How many of these do you wanna go on?” Jane asks, and she sounds serious but her eyes are teasing. “Because I’m gonna have to work out a budget.”

“Just plan on getting a lot of mileage out of that jumpsuit,” Maura says, and makes sure to lower the timbre of her voice enough that Jane audibly swallows.

  


After dinner, they get back in the car, and after watching familiar landmarks pass by, they pull up to the Museum of Science. Maura is intrigued.

Jane opens her door again, taking Maura’s hand when she almost stumbles, and leads them into the cinema. 

When they find their seats, Maura notices that Jane is already slightly restless, and she wonders if it’s from their proximity or something else.

“Can I ask what we’re watching?” she asks.

“They’re short films from like, I don't know, the beginning of cinema. Some guy remastered them so MoS could show them at a special screening in this theatre,” Jane says in an almost rehearsed way, like she knew Maura would ask.

“But you hate old movies,” Maura says, surprised. “You refused to watch _Rome, Open City_ with me even though I told you it was Italian and nominated for an Academy Award in 1947.”

“I don’t _hate_ old mov--I figured these ones are short, Maura, so if they’re boring at least they’ll be over quicker,” Jane says, huffing, “And anyway, it doesn’t matter whether I like them, because tonight is about…”

She trails off, but Maura has an idea of where Jane was going with that. She’s doing her best to make sure Maura knows she’s serious, just as Maura asked, and the best way Jane knows how to make Maura believe her is to show her how much she knows about what Maura likes.

Maura knows that Jane will shy away from anything saccharine Maura might want to say in response, and there is a growing list of things Maura would like to say tonight that would fall under that category, so she doesn’t.

“Sit up straight,” Maura says instead, gentle but firm. “You’ll rumple the fabric of your jumpsuit.”

Jane listens, unfolding from a wide-legged slump in her seat, but as the lights go down and the first film starts, her hands begin fidgeting in her lap. Her eyes still on the screen in front of them, Maura reaches a hand over the arms of their seats and takes one of Jane’s hands in hers. She feels Jane look over at her, and smiles softly, knowing it’s a little wry but not being able to help herself. Jane’s hands, calloused and long-boned and sure, wrap around hers and hold, anchored.

By the time the five films are done, Jane has relaxed into herself again, and even though Maura knows she could have enjoyed the early craftsmanship of the crudely-cut images in front of her, she finds she’s not taken in as much information from them as she usually does. She finds instead, that most of her brainpower has been taken up by thinking about the way Jane’s fingers have been tracing patterns over her palm and wrist, shy but sure, for the past fifteen minutes.

She picks up Maura’s hand and gets to her feet, pulling Maura up with her.

“There’s just one more thing I have planned to do,” Jane says. “We don’t even have to go anywhere, we just have to find the staff entrance.”

  
  


There’s a security guard stationed at the back of the building when they finally extricate themselves from the crowd and slip around a darkened corner. Maura finds it odd, until Jane flashes her badge and the guard unlocks the door.

“Detective Rizzoli; Doctor,” the security guard says with a small smile, handing Jane a keycard.

“Thank you, Nadine,” Jane says with a conspiratorial wink, and the security guard nods.

“Have a wonderful evening, ladies.”

Once the door shuts behind them, Maura looks at Jane quizzically.

“So what was the lie here; police business? Or was this one a bribe?”

Jane pretends to look offended. “You have no faith in me at all, Dr Isles. This _is_ police business. I’m the police and we have business here. Where’s the lie?”

Maura narrows her eyes, but before she can find the right response Jane has leaned in, eyes shining, and kissed her. It’s only quick, just the sweet press of her mouth before she pulls away, but Maura still feels giddy from it.

Jane cracks a smile and then they’re both just grinning at each other like fools in the dark, unable to do anything else.

“Okay, come on,” Jane says, her gaze still shiny and fixed on Maura’s mouth. “We’ve got a bit of a walk ahead of us.”

They set off down the corridor, Jane’s long stride eating up the ground easier than Maura in her heels.

“Can I ask you something?” Maura says when they stop so Jane can swipe the keycard she was given and open a Staff Only door.

“Anything.”

“Before the memorial, when you were sleeping in my bed. Was that about Bueller?”

Jane's stride falters for a moment, and Maura worries she won't answer.

“Some of it," she says eventually.

“Some?”

Jane sighs.

“You’re not… you’re not _afraid_ of anything, Maura.”

“I’m afraid of plenty of things,” Maura says, not understanding. 

Jane shakes her head. “Not like me. I know that you can be afraid of stuff but you don’t let it get to you. It doesn’t mess you up the same.”

Upset for Jane, Maura wants to tell her that fear is healthy -- being too rational to let fear ever take over isn’t a skill like Jane thinks it is; it’s a bad coping mechanism. 

“After Bueller… I don’t know,” Jane continues before Maura can say anything. Her voice is rough again. “I was so terrified. Bein' next to you like that was the only way I could sleep.”

“I wish you’d told me,” Maura says, watching Jane take out her bun so she can run a hand through her hair.

Jane shrugs. “You had your own problems to deal with. We need to go this way now, I think.”

They keep walking, and Maura can’t help but be curious. Jane has used her status as a detective to get access to plenty of places before, but it has always been in pursuit of the truth in a case. Maura can’t remember her ever using it just to impress her before.

“Where are we going?”

“To the moon,” Jane says cryptically, and doesn’t elaborate. 

Walking through the museum at night feels spell-like. With only the sound of their two sets of footsteps, the rooms they pass through feel cavernous; any noise echoing like hymns in a cathedral.

Jane leads them to another keycard door, and they slip into a series of back hallways of the building.

“Do you have a favourite moon?” Maura asks.

Jane just looks at her, as she often does, like Maura is from a different species and just learned how to speak human language for the first time.

“The… normal one? That you can see from outside?” Jane says, confused. “No one has a ‘favourite moon’, Maura.”

“I do,” Maura says, paying Jane no mind. She knows at least three astronomers who also have favourite moons, though she can’t say much for their choices. Astronomers are strange people. 

Jane is looking at her with her lips pulled between her teeth, like she wants to laugh but she’s being polite. 

“Okay then, _Galileo_ , what’s your favourite moon?” Jane asks, and keeps leading them down the halls of the museum, pausing every so often to check something on her phone. A map, Maura thinks.

“Phoebe,” she says matter-of-factly, answering Jane’s question. “The first moon of Saturn to be encountered by the spacecraft Cassini. Do you need directions to a specific wing? I have been here before.”

“No, I’m fine,” Jane says quickly, “Tell me about Phoebe. Is she hot?”

Maura smiles; sees the rare opportunity for a joke that Jane won’t get. “She used to be.”

Jane stops abruptly and looks at her, frowning. “What?”

Maura chuckles at Jane’s expression, and takes her arm so she can tuck her own through it. 

“Moons and planets can evolve from heated forms to frozen ones. Phoebe is one of them. But I like it mostly because it’s unusual -- over time it’s become less spherical, not more, and it’s the only one of Saturn’s irregular moons that orbits backwards.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a huge nerd?”

“You have,” Maura replies serenely, and lets Jane walk them on again. 

When they reach a set of wide double doors, Jane stops and turns towards her. “This is it. Close your eyes.”

Maura gives her a look, suddenly concerned that Jane’s idea of finishing a date might involve an active crime scene. But Jane’s face is is open and eager as she’s ever seen it, so Maura trusts her, and closes her eyes.

She feels Jane’s warm fingers envelop hers, squeezing gently, and hears the doors in front of them open. Jane gently leads her forward and then drops her hand.

“You can open your eyes now.”

When Maura does, she gasps, because it’s the galaxy.

More accurately it’s a revolving projection of all the known constellations and moons in the solar system, but for the effect it gives off Jane might as well have stolen the Milky Way out of the sky and put it in this museum chamber.

“I told them to keep the installation running for a few hours extra.”

Without throngs of tourists and schoolchildren, with only Jane’s outline to interrupt the celestial bodies’ orbit around the room, Maura finds her breath stolen clean out of her throat.

“Maura, you’re not saying anything. Do you hate it?”

“I don’t hate it, Jane,” Maura breathes, and Jane smiles with relief.

“I think there are some interactive displays around here somewhere. They’re probably for kids but… I’m gonna look at them.”

Maura lets her have a moment, knowing that Jane’s a little overwhelmed. Maura is a little overwhelmed herself, and tries to steady her mind by walking over to a display explaining the similarities and differences between the constellations in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. 

The display next to it, though, is what ends up catching her eye.

Archimedes’ law, in English and its original Greek, reads out above an interactive exhibit where museum-goers could stack the moons of the solar system on one side of a lever, while Earth sat on the other, waiting to be moved by enough weight. It’s more of a math problem than an astronomic one, Maura thinks, but it feels fateful that it has turned up here at all.

She reads the words again, even though she knows them by heart, until she feels calm and centred enough that she can look over at Jane again. When she does, she feels for the second time in as many minutes like she’s lost all the breath out of her body.

The moons and constellations projected around them light Jane’s face into startling winks of colour. Merope passes over her cheek before slowly revolving towards the moons orbiting Jupiter. Jane is just watching her, a hand paused over the 3D map traversing the surface of Earth’s own moon, all her craters and cliffs mesmerizing in their alien greyness. Her gaze is raptor-sharp and sure, and there’s hunger in it, persistent and wolfish.

Maura isn’t sure anyone has ever looked at her the way Jane is looking at her. 

“Are you sure you don’t hate it?” she asks, and Maura can’t answer that because Jane’s voice is too low; shot through with scratchy lust as she walks the few feet it takes to bring them together.

Maura steps even closer and in one smooth motion her hand slides over the hard line of Jane’s jaw, pulling her into her own orbit.

She runs a thumb over Jane’s bottom lip and hears her harsh gasp of breath at the contact; watches Jane's eyes darken impossibly to rabbit-black. After she tests her skin against the hard line of Jane’s teeth, Maura replaces her thumb with her mouth. Jane’s own mouth opens immediately and Maura likes the sound she makes, a curled-up whimper that stretches out when Maura gently bites down on her lip before letting it slide back out of her mouth again.

“Fuck, Maura.”

Maura starts to smile, but Jane’s hand curls around the back of her head and roughly pulls her back in. Their kiss is all damp noises and rushes of breath, Jane backing Maura up against the interactive display she was looking at until she can hook her hands under Maura’s thighs and hoist her onto it. Jane's easy strength in this context is sexier than Maura could have imagined, and she thrusts her tongue hard enough past Jane's teeth that she thinks she might taste blood.

The swell of Jane’s tongue against hers threatens to make Maura wet enough to soak through her dress, her moans thready and almost embarrassing in how needy they sound. She feels like she did shoved up against her oven; brimming with something that feels almost like wildfire. 

Jane’s body feels willing as Maura pulls her closer, yielding gently under her fingers like a bowstring, but there’s still something Jane is holding back.

Breaking their kiss, Maura looks up at Jane’s flushed face; her still open mouth, and sees apprehension.

“Are you okay?”

Panting, Jane doesn’t answer her and instead rests her forehead on Maura’s shoulder; arms sliding around her back. 

“I’m sorry, Maura,” Jane says, and Maura knows it’s not just about the moment they’re stranded in.

Maura tangles a hand in Jane’s hair and holds her tight until she can feel her stop shaking. She presses her lips to Jane’s neck, and clears the thickness of emotion out of her throat.

“I’m sorry too.”

Jane lets out a breath she might have been holding for years.

  
  
  


It doesn’t seem to take as long to get out of the museum as it did to get in, but Jane’s hand stays firmly clasped around Maura’s this time. 

They drive home like they might any other night -- talking about the case, arguing about the best route to take home -- but when they get to Maura’s townhouse and Jane stops the car, the air is tight with something. Promise, maybe. A chewy kind of tension.

“Can I walk you to your door?” Jane asks. In the low yellow light her eyes gleam, and Maura feels her thighs clench.

She nods.

On her stoop, Jane stands a step below her and takes her hand, rubbing a thumb over Maura’s knuckles.

“I had a really nice time, Jane.”

“I wish we’d done it sooner,” Jane says, and sounds regretful. 

“We’re doing it now,” Maura says, and hopes her tone is reassuring. 

Jane smiles up at her, shorter than Maura in her heels on her step. She nods, then leans onto her toes to press a chaste kiss to the corner of Maura’s mouth.

When she pulls back they’re both blushing, as though they haven’t now shared two kisses that have made Maura’s body feel utterly feral with want. 

“Do you… want to come inside?” Maura asks, her hand still clasped in Jane’s.

From the immediate, flighty way Jane tenses and drops her hand, Maura can tell she’s said the wrong thing. 

“I don’t mean for intercourse,” she says, trying to right the conversation, but Jane winces and covers her face and obviously she’s missed the mark a bit.

“Please never say intercourse again,” Jane groans from behind her hand.

“Well what would you like me to call it instead?” Maura asks. Jane can be so unexpectedly prudish that she’d assumed ‘intercourse’ would be the least displeasing word she could have used.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Jane replies, emphatic. “Maura I’m not--I’m not there yet, okay?” 

There’s an edge to Jane’s voice that Maura recognises as fear, and she thinks about her confession in the museum. Maura doesn't want Jane to be afraid of her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that I wanted to… do anything of that nature,” she tries. “We can just have a drink and go to sleep, like any other night.”

Jane softens slightly, but Maura can tell she’s still balking; prey-like.

“It’s okay, Jane. You don’t have to say yes.”

“I want to,” Jane says quickly. “I do want to.”

She knows what Jane means. They have built a friendship and dismantled it and it’s coming back together, slowly, but it’s different. More. There are layers to it, of kissing and open glances and things they’re going to call _dates_ now. It’s a lot to process.

“Can I come over for breakfast?” Jane asks, finding a compromise.

Maura smiles. “Of course.”

Jane texts her later, when Maura is settling in to go to sleep, just to say she got home safe and will see her in the morning. 

Then, just before Maura puts her phone down, one more message comes through. 

_Thank you_.

  
  
  


It’s not even seven in the morning when Jane barges in through the front door. Maura has already made coffee; dug out the white bread she keeps in the freezer just because Jane doesn't like eating anything that might have a discernible grain in it; gotten a pan out for the eggs.

"Hey, Maura," Jane says, shutting the door entirely too loudly. "Ready to help me wrap up this fish murder?"

"Anyone else would be horrified to find you in their house this early in the morning, Jane."

"Good thing you aren't anyone else then, isn't it?"

Maura rolls her eyes. Their date seems to be all but forgotten and it could be any other morning. It could be, except that rather than head straight for the fridge Jane stops by Maura’s chair and waits for her to look up from her oatmeal. When she does, Jane leans in to kiss her squarely on the mouth. She’s blushing as she pulls away and continues on her way around the counter, and Maura smiles.

Maybe it isn’t like any other morning. Maybe it’s better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is, in theory, a one-shot sequel ft. cousin patty's wedding making its way towards being thought about being written so i guess watch this space but also i am hard to motivate and i've been neglecting my manuscript for actual months now so
> 
> anyway, regardless, thank you so very much for reading this fic; commenting and kudosing and bookmarking etc, if you have any final thoughts please let me know :)


End file.
